Sika’s 100 Greatest Movies of All Time! 56. Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995)
56. Die Hard With A Vengeance [DVD]
Plot: A man calling himself “Simon” (Jeremy Irons) threatens to detonate a bomb somewhere in New York City unless Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) cooperates in a game of “Simon Says”. McClane is however suspended from the force, has a bad hangover, a bad attitude, and isn’t in the mood for games, especially this one.
By a fluke, shop owner Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) also gets dragged into the game and a race against time to find the bomb begins.
John McClane is about to have a very bad day (tagline)
Also Starring: Graham Greene, Colleen Camp, Larry Bryggman, Anthony Peck
Directed by: John McTiernan
Written by: Jonathan Hensleigh
Length: 131 min
Budget: $90 million
Gross Revenue: $366,101,666
Favorite Quote:
Zeus: So what’s up with this L.A. thing? You famous or something?
McClane: Yeah, for about five minutes.
Zeus: Don’t tell me. Rodney King, right?
McClane: Fuck you.
Review: No disrespect to Renny Harlin and whoever directed the latest one, but in my opinion John McTiernan is the true Die Hard Director.
And even though I liked both Die Hard 2 and Die Hard 4.0 very much, they aren’t as good as the first and third in the series. Why that is I don’t know.
Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the Director, but I like to think it does because otherwise my whole spiel about John McTiernan being the true Die Hard Director becomes just jibberish to lengthen a review that otherwise just would say: Bruce Willis is back in his wifebeater in yet another Die Hard movie, fighting evil Jeremy Irons with Samuel L Jackson as comic relief.
Nerdiest Movie Trivia: The only “Die Hard” movie based on an original screenplay. The first Die Hard is based on the novel by Roderick Thorpe, Die Hard 2 is based on a novel by Walter Wager and Live Free or Die Hard is based on an article by John Carlin.
The script was originally titled “Simon Says” (where Zeus was scripted as a woman) and was considered as the third sequel to Lethal Weapon.
PREVIOUS ON THE LIST: 57. Stephen King’s It (1990)
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