| Die Hard with a Vengeance | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | John McTiernan |
| Produced by | John McTiernan Michael Tadross Associate Producer: Robert H. Lemer Co-Producer: Carmine Zozzora David Willis Executive Producer: Andrew G. Vajna Buzz Feitshans Robert Lawrence |
| Written by | Jonathan Hensleigh Characters: Roderick Thorp |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Jeremy Irons Samuel L. Jackson Larry Bryggman Graham Greene Colleen Camp |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Peter Menzies Jr. |
| Editing by | John Wright |
| Studio | Cinergi Pictures |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox (USA) Touchstone Pictures (International) |
| Release date(s) | May 19, 1995 |
| Running time | 131 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $100,012,499 (domestic) $361,212,499 (worldwide) |
| Preceded by | Die Hard 2: Die Harder |
| Followed by | Live Free or Die Hard |
Die Hard with a Vengeance is a 1995 American action film that is the third entry in the Die Hard film series. It was produced and directed by John McTiernan, who directed the first film and stars Bruce Willis as NYPD detective John McClane. The film also stars Samuel L. Jackson as Willis' reluctant partner Zeus Carver and Jeremy Irons as the main villain Simon Gruber. The film was written by Jonathan Hensleigh and was followed by Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
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The film is set 7 years after the events of Die Hard 2. After a bomb explodes in the early morning at the Bonwit Teller department store in New York City, a man calling himself "Simon" (Jeremy Irons) telephones the police claiming responsibility, and demands that they play a game of "Simon Says" to prevent any more explosions. Simon orders suspended NYPD Lt. John McClane to walk through Harlem wearing a sandwich board displaying the words "I hate niggers". Before McClane can be beaten by a group of outraged residents, Harlem electrician Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) steps in to rescue McClane. Although he despises whites, Carver's main concern is that a murdered white cop in Harlem could result in "open season" on blacks by trigger-happy white cops. Together they return to the precinct where Simon calls and takes credit for stealing several thousand pounds of an Astrolite-like bi-component explosive, and warns McClane and Carver to continue to play Simon Says to prevent any more bombs made of the material to go off.
At the 72nd Street Subway Station, Simon taunts McClane with "As I was going to St Ives", but the threat proves to be a false alarm. McClane and Carver are instructed by Simon to reach the Wall Street subway station, 90 blocks away, in 30 minutes, to prevent a bomb on a subway train destined for the station from going off. McClane manages to get aboard the moving subway car and locate the bomb, but it still explodes, sending the train cars tearing through the station, though McClane's actions prevent anyone from being killed. McClane and Carver regroup with the police and FBI and learn that "Simon" is really former East German special forces officer Simon Peter Gruber, and may be holding a grudge over the death of his brother Hans Gruber, who was killed by McClane at the end of the first film. Simon calls into the group and explains that he has planted a bomb in one of New York's public schools, and that any radio communication may set it off. This forces McClane and Carver to continue to follow Simon's instructions while the police, using every available man and resource without their standard means of communication, launch a search of every school.
With almost no officers remaining at Wall Street, Simon, his employer Mathias Targo (Nicholas Wyman), his mistress Katya (Sam Phillips), and numerous henchmen easily break into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York through the ruined subway station to steal all $140 billion USD of the gold bullion in its vaults, hauling it away in dump trucks. McClane comes to realize that Simon's games are a distraction and discovers the theft. Simon throws the city into chaos by publicly revealing the school bomb threat to a radio show, overloading the 911 switchboard, while McClane and Carver track Simon's trucks down to a tanker. The two sneak aboard the tanker and Carver follows Katya and is lead to Simon and attempts to threaten Simon into giver the code for the school bomb but wind up getting shot in the leg by Simon while McClane searches through the containers and is attacked by Targo who is eventually knocked out, Simon eventually captures McClane and ties him and Zeus to the real bomb which Simon plans to detonate sending the bullion to the bottom of the ocean and ruining the world's economy. However, Simon has further deceived Targo as the containers aboard the tanker only contain scrap metal, the real bullion having been sent elsewhere, and Katya kills Targo as they escape. McClane and Carver, also aware of Simon's deception, manage to escape in time. They regroup with the police and are treated for injures, believing that there is no hope for finding Simon.
When prodded by Carver to call his estranged wife, Holly, McClane discovers on an aspirin bottle Simon gave to him a clue to Simon's location, a border town in Quebec. Just as Simon is ready to disperse his henchmen with the bullion, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, led by McClane, arrive and capture his men. Simon and Katya try to escape on a helicopter gunship, and when he spots McClane, Simon orders the pilot towards McClane so that he can fire upon him. McClane uses his last bullets to fire on a power line, knocking it down onto the helicopter, causing it to explode. Carver regroups with McClane, happy to put an end to the threat, and jokingly reminds him that he never finished his call to Holly, directing him to a nearby pay phone.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Bruce Willis | Lieutenant John McClane |
| Jeremy Irons | Simon Peter Gruber (alias "Peter Krieg") |
| Samuel L. Jackson | Zeus Carver |
| Larry Bryggman | Inspector Walter Cobb |
| Graham Greene | Detective Joe Lambert |
| Colleen Camp | Detective Connie Kowalski |
| Sharon Washington | Officer Jane |
| Anthony Peck | Detective Ricky Walsh |
| Michael Alexander Jackson | Dexter |
| Aldis Hodge | Raymond |
| Nicholas Wyman | Mathias Targo |
| Sam Phillips | Katya |
| Aasif Mandvi | Arab cabbie |
| Elvis Duran | Radio DJ (himself) |
| Tony Halme | Roman |
| John McTiernan, Sr. | Fisherman |
| Mischa Hausserman | Mischa |
| Argenis Sanchez | Pedro |
| Timothy Adams | Günter |
The film is based on a script written by Jonathan Hensleigh originally titled Simon Says, which was originally conceived as a Brandon Lee action film, then later considered for use as the fourth installment of the Lethal Weapon series. The first 45 minutes, until immediately after the Wall Street bombing, 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 Museum of Art, an idea not used here, but which appears in John McTiernan's film The Thomas Crown Affair and also the video game Die Hard: Vendetta.
An alternative ending to the one shown in the final movie was filmed with Irons and Willis, set some time after the events in New York. It can be found on the special edition DVD. In this version it is presumed that the robbery succeeds, and that McClane was used as the scapegoat for everything that went wrong. He is fired from the NYPD after more than 20 years on the force and the FBI has even taken away his pension. Nevertheless he still manages to track Simon using the batch number on the bottle of aspirins and they meet in a cafe in Hungary.
In this version, Simon has double-crossed most of his accomplices, gotten the loot to a safe hiding place (Nova Scotia), and has the gold turned into statuettes of a famous landmark (in this case the Empire State Building) in order to smuggle it out of the country; but he is still tracked down to his foreign hideaway. This is very similar to Alec Guinness's situation in the British heist movie The Lavender Hill Mob made some 45 years earlier in which the stolen gold is turned into Eiffel Tower paperweights.
McClane is keen to take his problems out on Simon whom he invites to play a game called "McClane Says". This involves a form of Russian Roulette with a small Chinese rocket launcher with the sights removed, meaning it cannot be determined which end is which. McClane then asks Simon some riddles similar to the ones he played in New York. When Simon gets a riddle wrong, McClane forces him at gunpoint to fire the launcher, which fires the rocket through Simon, killing him. Of course, McClane had been wearing a flak jacket (which was the answer to the final riddle "what could he have brought to the meeting to save his life?"), so even if Simon had pointed the launcher the right way, it is likely that the relatively low-velocity rocket would not have caused McClane enough injury to prevent him from shooting Simon.
In the DVD audio commentary, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh claims that this version was dropped because the studio thought it showed a more cruel and menacing side to McClane, a man who killed for revenge rather than in self-defense. Hensleigh's intention was to show that the events in New York and the subsequent repercussions had tilted him psychologically. This alternative ending, set some time after the main events of the movie, would have marked a serious break from the Die Hard formula, in which the plot unfolds over a period of roughly 12 hours.
According to the DVD audio commentary, a second alternate ending had McClane and Carver floating back to shore on a makeshift raft after the explosion at sea. Carver says it is a shame the bad guys are going to get away; McClane tells him not to be so sure. The scene then shifts to the plane where the terrorists find the briefcase bomb they left in the park and which Carver gave back to them (in this version it was not used to blow up the dam). The movie would end on a darkly comic note as Simon asks if anyone has a 4 gallon jug. This draft of the script was rejected early on, and unlike the rocket-launcher sequence, was never actually filmed.
Die Hard With a Vengeance had a budget of an estimated $90,000,000. It had a wide release opening in 2,525 theaters, making $22,162,245 its opening weekend in the U.S. Die Hard With a Vengeance made $100,012,499 in the USA, and another $261,200,000 worldwide for a gross revenue of $361,212,499. The film received mixed reviews with a 45% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[1]
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Die Hard: With a Vengeance is a 1995 film about a New York cop who finds himself in a fight for his life as he races around New York, playing a bomber's deadly game.
| Die Hard: With a Vengeance | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | John McTiernan |
| Produced by | John McTiernan Michael Tadross |
| Written by | Roderick Thorp Jonathan Hensleigh |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Jeremy Irons Samuel L. Jackson Larry Bryggman Graham Greene |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Peter Menzies Jr. |
| Editing by | John Wright |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox Cinergi DVD: Touchstone Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 191995 |
| Running time | Theatrical Cut: 115 min. Unrated Cut: 131 min. |
| Country | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | Domestic: $100,012,499 Worldwide: $361,212,499 |
| Preceded by | Die Hard 2 |
| Followed by | Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0) |
| IMDb profile | |
Die Hard with a Vengeance is a 1995 action movie starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. It is the third movie in the Die Hard series.
Simon Gruber is the older brother of the villain from the first movie, Hans Gruber. Simon destroys a building in New York City. He says that he will destroy another one unless the police do what he tells them to do. His first task is to have John McClane to go Harlem and stand around for 15 minutes with a sign that says "I hate niggers" with his gun taped to his back so that he cannot reach it. A group of black men attack McClane. A shopkeeper named Zeus Carver saves McClane by grabbing the gun and getting into a taxicab.
The next task that Gruber has them do is to reach a pay phone. He then gives them a riddle and has them call back within 30 seconds to the right phone number (the answer to the riddle is the last four digits) or else the trash can full of explosives will be detonated. They call back with the right phone number but it is past 30 seconds. Carver and McClane duck out of the way as Gruber laughs.
The third task that Gruber sets for them is to reach the Wall Street subway station by 10:20 a.m. or else the station will be blown up. McClane and Carver steal a taxicab and cut through the park to reach the station in time. McClane stops at an earlier station and gets on the train. He then searches the train for the bomb and finds it. He throws it out of the cab car. Carver gets to the Wall Street station and picks up the phone, but because McClane is not there, Gruber says they did not follow his rules. The train rolls over the detonator and sets it off. The bomb explodes and destroys a large part of the station. McClane is injured but is alive.
The FBI come in and tell him that the man's name is Simon Gruber and that he is Hans' brother. Simon calls in again and tells him that he has placed a bomb inside one of the schools in New York City. Any attempt to get the children out will result in the bomb being blown up. He tells McClane and Carver to head to a park. The entire police force goes out and starts to search every school to find the bomb.
With the police gone, Simon Gruber and a bunch of dump trucks come in. They kill the security guards and begin to steal the gold from the vault in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. McClane and Carver arrive at the park and find another bomb. They use a five-gallon and three-gallon jug to make four gallons and put it on the weight to disable it. McClane catches a kid stealing something; the kid says that there's not a cop for miles around. McClane then goes to the Federal Reserve building and walks in. As Gruber's men escort him down, he asks them about lotto numbers and realizes that they're not the real cops and kills them.
McClane then drives a car out to intercept Gruber and his men. He has Carver go out to Yankee Stadium since that's what Gruber originally told them to do. Gruber drives into a aqueduct. McClane follows them in, but they flood it, causing a ton of water to rush out. McClane grabs a ladder and is sent flying into the air. Meanwhile, Carver went to Yankee Stadium and did not find anybody. Two of Gruber's men with sniper rifles are there to kill him, but decide to follow Carver instead since McClane is not with him. Carver is driving on a highway and sees McClane as he is thrown into the air. A car chase and gunfight take place as Gruber's men show up to try to kill them.
McClane and Carver find Gruber loading the gold onto a cargo boat in New York Harbor. After getting in, a few battles take place and Carver and McClane are captured by Gruber's men. They are then tied up and Gruber sets the fuse to blow the boat up. Before leaving, Gruber tosses McClane a bottle of aspirin. Gruber claims he is blowing up $100 billion of gold bullion but there is nothing inside; he is trying to make the value of gold higher by "destroying" the supply. McClane and Carver work their way out of the cuffs and jump to safety as the ship blows up.
They are rescued by the police. On the ship, McClane takes a quarter to call his wife. As he is being connected, he takes an aspirin, looks at the bottom, and realizes that Gruber is heading to Canada. They intercept him and fly a helicopter over his ship. In the ensuring fight, Gruber gets in his own helicopter and shoots and hits their helicopter, forcing them to land. McClane starts running to make Gruber shoot at him. He notices a bunch of power lines and shoots them. The lines fall on Gruber's helicopter and kill him.
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