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Die Hard With a Vengeance

Die Hard With a Vengeance

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Without a doubt the best Die Hard!
Review: In this Die Hard, a mysterious man is man Siomn(Jeremy Irons) is planting bombs all over NYC. Simon asks suspended NYC cop John Mclane to run all over the city playing his deadly game trying to defuse his bombs. He picks up Zeus(Samuel L. Jackson) in Harlwm after he saves Mclane's life. The two play Simon's game. This film is wonderful. The first two were good, but this one definetly tops them. Its fun watching Willis and Jackson running around NYC defusing bombs. But its more than that. Mclane and Zeus discover that Simon's bombs are just busy work for them. Simon explodes a bomb in a subway tunnel to blast a whole to get to the gold in the federal reserve. Definetly reccmended. A great summer movie!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: NEW AND IMPROVED!
Review: When I watched "Die Hard With a Vengeance" from the very first box edition on DVD, I was very dissapointed. You could see fuzz in almost every scene and the sound quality wasn't that great. Now, I have just seen this movie in the new ultimate edition box set and I loved it! It was everything I was hoping for and more.

For those who don't know, this film is about a madman who is threatening to blow up public places in New York unless Willis and Jackson are able to perform certain tasks. The action is outstanding, the car chases are breath taking, and the acting is awesome. Bruce Willis is hillarious with his sarcastic and short tempered humor.

This new and improved special edition of "Die Hard 3" is more than I hoped for. The picture quality is crystal clear. In fact, there are some scenes where the picture is TOO clear! I forgot how beaten up and bruised Bruce Willis gets in this movie!

For those who have DVD players who can play DTS will also enjoy the new sound transfer. It was ten times louder and thrilling with the new DTS analog, which makes the movie even better. The crashes and gun shots sound a lot more better and louder.

I was very pleased with this new remastered version of "Die Hard 3". I will have to watch the other two in the box set to see if they are just as good. I highly recommend this DVD, or box set to anyone who loves "Die Hard".

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Sign of the Times
Review: The most flattering appraisal one could give of "Die Hard With a Vengeance" is "moronic". What else is one to remark of a movie in which people are manifestly killed for the pleasure of the audience watching it? It is a sign of our profoundly debased and witless times that the same rating of 3.5 stars should have been given by a pundit to this brutal, vainglorious, and puerile film as he had elsewhere deigned to give to a very different film, "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" (1940; director William Dieterle; starring Edward G. Robinson, in a magnificent performance), which concerns the historical career of a famous medical scientist and his brilliant and heroic accomplishments, which quite literally countless millions of lives.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Non stop action
Review: A terrorist calling himself Simon (Jeremy Irons) wreaks havoc on New York. Simon wants to play a game of simon says with John McClane (Bruce Willis). Along the way McClane picks up an unwilling partner named Zeus(Samuel L. Jackson). Together they race back and forth across New York City trapped in Simon's deadly game.

This is one non stop action flick with quite a few laughs thrown in. It may not be as good as the first Die Hard, but it is still a great film on its own. This film has several great action scenes like the cab ride threw the park and a bloody shoot out in a elevator. So there are some plot holes but the action does more then make up for it.

The DVD is loaded with three featurettes, storyboards, interviews and trailers. Also the alternate ending was very cool and I prefered it to the one they ended up using. For those of you like me who own the first DVD release, it is well worth replacing with this new special edition. The picture is much better and the sound is now in DTS. This film has a high replay value, I always find myself pulling it off the shelf. I can't recommend it enough.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: the second best in the series
Review: The second sequel to Die Hard, Die Hard 3 doesn't top the original, but definetly delivers a few laughs and some great acion sequences. Bruce Willis, who reprises his role as John McClane, has to do whatever Simon (a madman played by Jeremy Irons) says or he'll blow up a public place. Along to help McClane is Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) the third and last of the male leads. Although the plot gets a lot more complicated and is full of different twists and turns, I not going to tell you anymore because I'll be giving away the whole movie.

Although Die Hard 3 doesn't have nearly as much action as the first two, it does deliver hilarious dialouge (courtesy of Sameuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis) and some exciting scenes. For example, there is metro train explosion, a car chase, a bloody elevator shootout, a trip down the watery aqueduct tunnels, a pleasant drive through the park, a little side trip to a huge boat, and a helicopter shootout. Yep, folks. That's all in one 2 hour movie. (WOW!) Also, director John McTiernan (who directed the original Die Hard but not the second) directed Die Hard 3. This time, McTiernan decided to all out and make the film take place in a whole city instead of a building. Some people may like that and other may not.

The only bad thing I found about the movie was this: IT WAS GODD BUT NOT AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL. If you like the first two, you should definetly give this one a chance.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hard Not to Like
Review: DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE does not have the emotion and consistency of the first two movies. It doesn't happen on Christmas Eve like the other two. John Mclane's wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) isn't in it. Finally as in the first two films, the terrorism happens in the confines of one specific area (i.e. Die Hard: in a high rise building, Die Hard II: at an airport). This adventure is all over the map in New York City. However, it is one of those movies that grows better with repeated viewings, somehow works better on the small screen, and also helped by the chemistry of Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. Jeremy Irons is decent as the villian and overall an above average action thriller.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Samuel Jackson joins Bruce Willis for the third "Die Hard"
Review: There are plans for "Die Hard 4: Die Hardest" for 2005, with Bruce Willis back for a fourth time and director John McTiernan back for a third as John McClane and his daughter become involved in yet another terrorist plot. I have high hopes for such a film because the "Die Hard" series has been one of the strongest in the action genre. Granted, the best of the bunch remains the original 1988 film, which is the standard by which all subsequent films in the genre have been judged: "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" was "Die Hard" in an airport and "Speed" was "Die Hard on a Bus," not to be confused with "Speed II" which was "Die Hard" and "Speed" on a boat. Apparently Willis only does these movies when he has one that thinks it will work, which would explain why "Die Hard with a Vengeance," the third film in the series, came out in 1995, five years after the sequel.

The best thing that can be said about this movie is that it would have worked even if it was not a "Die Hard" movie. The idea that John McClane is once again on the outs with his wife (who never appears in the film) is getting stale and the idea that he is being targeted by this film's mysterious villain simply named Simon (Jeremy Irons) could just as easily have a different explanation than one that ties this film back to the original. In fact, what makes this third one a solid action film is that it does indeed go back to the original for two of its strongest elements. The first is the idea that the crime is a fairly complex robbery dressed up with a lot of distractions. The second is that McClane's character had a tenuous anchor with another person; in the original it was Reginald VelJohnson's Al Powell, although for most of the film it was merely by radio. That fault is rectified in this film with Willis given a strong co-star in Samuel L. Jackson's Zeus Carver. This time it is Jackson's character who suddenly finds himself in extraordinary circumstances, forced by some nut with a whole lot of bombs at his disposal to jump through a bizarre series of hoops.

One of the key elements in the success of the "Die Hard" movies was that McClane managed to use his brains at opportune moments. That issue is forced to the extreme in this one as the voice at the other end of a long series of phone calls provides one deadly brainteaser after another. This allows the logic of the movie produce a series of stunts and action sequences as the two mismatched heroes race around New York City trying to avoiding anybody getting killed (including themselves). Willis and Jackson work well off of each other, helped by the fact there characters are not stupid, and that despite the yelling and screaming solving problems is the highest priority. We have seen all of these elements before from all the action/buddy movies that Hollywood has produced, and their success remains contingent on how much we like watching the two buddies do what they gotta do. The whole idea of these things is to provide a compelling thrill ride, and by that standard "Die Hard with a Vengeance" delivers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Great Action Thrillers
Review: With director John McTiernan back at the helm, "Die Hard With a Vengeance" (1995) is a textbook example of action-packed filmmaking -- perhaps the best of the "Die Hard" trilogy. You couldn't ask for a better acting ensemble. Bruce Willis adds more depth to his John McClane role, thanks to the inspired casting of Jeremy Irons (as the vengeful brother of Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber) and Samuel L. Jackson (McClane's unlikely partner). There's more action and characterization than in the previous "Die Hard" films. McTiernan's swift pacing never lets up -- in fact, it plays like a modern-day movie serial. From beginning to fadeout, "Die Hard With a Vengeance" is great fun, especially when viewed in a widescreen format.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Decent action scenes can't save middling DIE HARD III
Review: John McTiernan returned to direct this second follow-up to McTiernan's original DIE HARD from 1988, but unfortunately all his considerable skill and energy can't rise above screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh's generic script. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE could easily have been LETHAL WEAPON 4 (maybe it almost was), and the script does little to make it stand out from other buddy action-movies (although Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson undoubtedly do work well together). As for the action scenes, they're certainly well-executed, but there's just no real momentum connecting the action scenes the way there was in the second half of DIE HARD 2. In VENGEANCE, there's just one action scene piled upon another, and the whole thing simply feels like an incoherent mess, which certainly was not the case in the first two films of the series.

DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE will certainly entertain action fans, since the action scenes are undeniably creative and well-mounted. Compare VENGEANCE to the first two DIE HARDs, though, and there's no contest. DIE HARD will forever be an action classic, and DIE HARD 2 was a generally worthy sequel. In that company, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE is merely average.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Sign of the Times
Review: The most flattering appraisal one could give of "Die Hard With a Vengeance" is "moronic". What else is one to remark of a movie in which people are manifestly killed for the pleasure of the audience watching it? It is a sign of our profoundly debased and witless times that the same rating of 3.5 stars should have been given by a pundit to this brutal, vainglorious, and puerile film as he had elsewhere deigned to give to a very different film, "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" (1940; director William Dieterle; starring Edward G. Robinson, in a magnificent performance), which concerns the historical career of a famous medical scientist and his brilliant and heroic accomplishments, which quite literally countless millions of lives.


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