Die Hard with a Vengeance

Die Hard: With a Vengeance
File:Diehard3.jpg Die Hard: With a Vengeance DVD cover
Directed by	John McTiernan
Written by	Roderick Thorp Jonathan Hensleigh
Produced by	John McTiernan Michael Tadross
Starring	Bruce Willis Samuel L. Jackson Jeremy Irons
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	May 15 1995 (USA premiere)
Running time	131 min.
Language	English
Budget	$90,000,000 US (est.)

Die Hard: With a Vengeance is the third film in the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis as policeman John McClane. With a Vengeance adds Samuel L. Jackson as Zeus Carver, Willis' reluctant partner. Unlike the first two movies in the trilogy, this film contained much less action and violence and considerably more dialogue and character development.

Taglines: "Think fast. Look alive. Die hard.", "On a good day he's a great cop. On a bad day he's the best there is.", "McClane is back", "This time, it's personal", "It's boometime in the big apple", and "John McClane is about to have a very bad day."

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler The villain in this movie is Simon Gruber AKA Peter Krieg (played by Jeremy Irons), brother of Hans Gruber, a German criminal who was killed by McClane at the climax of Die Hard, the first film in the series. Simon attempts revenge upon McClane although he considers it largely a fringe benefit to indulge in while using the vendetta as a distraction while his real primary goal is robbing the high-security bank vault in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which holds the gold of several foreign nations.

Simon distracts the police by planting both real and phony bombs throughout the city, and forces McClane and Carver to participate in a game of "Simon says", which usually consists of giving them information about a bomb and giving them a chance to defuse it.

The games of Simon Says they play are:

• First at a phone booth, where Simon tells them the As I Was Going to St Ives riddle which they answer correctly but too late. Fortunately Simon didn't say Simon Says so there is no bomb.
• McClane is told that they have half an hour to go to a phonebox at a subway station near Wall Street from where they are on the upper west side. To do this, McClane drives through Central Park and makes a phone call for an ambulance which they follow through heavy traffic. Only Zeus makes it to the station, and the bomb is detonated. (although it was planned to go off anyway)
• They have to use a 3 gallon jug and 5 gallon jug to put exactly 4 gallons of water onto a scales. They do it by pouring 3 gallons from the 5 gallon jug leaving 2 gallons of water in the 5 gallon jug. Then they empty the 3 gallon jug and pour the 2 gallons into it, which leaves 1 gallon of empty space. They fill the 5 gallon jug and fill the space in the 3 gallon jug, leaving exactly 4 gallons.
• McClane figures out who the 21st President of the United States is in another riddle, with help from a truck driver - it is Chester A. Arthur

One memorable scene of the film is at the beginning. Simon blackmails McClane to stand on a street corner in the middle of Harlem while wearing a sandwich board sign saying "I hate niggers", which was meant to be seen as a suicidal thing to do. Carver just manages to extricate McClane from the scene before he would have gotten lynched. (While filming this scene, the sign worn by Bruce Willis actually says "I hate everybody"; this is the version that appears in TV broadcasts of the film. It was digitally replaced with the "I hate niggers" for use in the theatrical version.)

Die Hard with a Vengeance was the first in the series not to take place during the Christmas holidays and the first where John McClane is an active police officer on his own patch. Also significant is that for the first time he has an on-screen partner, Samuel L. Jackson's character, Zeus Carver.

Trivia

• An early idea for a third Die Hard film was to adapt a screenplay called Troubleshooter in which McClane would fight terrorists on a Carribean cruise. This idea was scuppered by the release of Under Siege. Another idea was to set the story on the Los Angeles subway, with McClane's daughter kidnapped by terrorists who mistake her for a VIP.

• The movie is based on a script written by Jonathan Hensleigh originally titled Simon Says, which was earlier considered for use as the fourth installment of the Lethal Weapon series. The first half of Die Hard: With a Vengeance is almost identical to Simon Says; the robbery was added to bring the story in line with other Die Hard films. The original plan was to have the villains burgle the Metropolitan Musuem of Art, an idea not used here, but which appears in John McTiernan's film The Thomas Crown Affair.

• Dick Cheney, the current Vice President of the United States, plays a non-speaking bit part as a New York official. The director pointed him out on the audio commentary.

• Pop singer Sam Phillips was originally supposed to have dialogue in the film, but it was decided that her character appeared much more lethal if she were silent. She was chosen for the film based on an 'audition' where one of her CD covers was obtained by the film's producers.

• An alternate ending was scripted and shot, wherein Simon gets away with the theft, but is confronted a year later in Europe by McClane. In the alternate ending, McClane forces Gruber to answer a series of children's riddles before tricking Gruber into killing himself with a rocket launcher.

External links

• Die Hard: With a Vengeance at IMDb