Fly in the Ointment: A Die Hard Retrospective (Part 3)
Some thoughts on Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). And The Lion King (2019). And Gilmore Girls.
Note: These movies have been around for a considerable amount of time, so assume there will be spoilers all throughout.
1995 was the year John McTiernan, director of the film Die Hard, returned to the director’s chair, rolled up his sleeves, and said “Move over, Renny, let me show you how to make a proper Die Hard sequel.” To my knowledge, at no point did McTiernan say this to Die Hard 2 director Renny Harlin. But I feel like he did through the act of making Die Hard with a Vengeance.
I won’t spend a lot of time dogging on the last movie since I spent 1000 words or so doing that a couple of weeks ago. I’ll just summarize my thoughts by saying the character of John McClane works better when he’s under the gun, so to speak. In Die Hard 2, he’s kinda just there while a Die Hard is happening around him and at no point does he feel like he’s got anything to prove.
When we first see McClane in Die Hard with a Vengeance, he’s hungover in the back of a police van. Suspended from the force, the only reason he’s here is because a madman calling himself Simon’s blown up a department store1 and called the police asking specifically for McClane. We learn through bits and pieces of dialogue that John’s screwed things up with Holly once again, explaining his current condition. Then before we know it, he’s standing in the middle of Harlem wearing nothing but a sandwich sign. More on that in a second.
All of this and the introduction of Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) happen before the 15-minute mark. McTiernan, at his best, was the kind of the director who knew how to cleanly set up a premise before giving way to the action. Having watched this twice through, I’m always taken aback by how neatly he’s sets up the chess board. In the first Die Hard, he was more deliberate in taking his time to set up the stakes for McClane. In this sequel, McTiernan throws you right into the thick of it and while I’m not the leading expert on action sequels, I think this is the best way to do it.
If you’ve watched the TV edit of Die Hard with a Vengeance, you probably remember the part where John McClane is standing on a street corner in Harlem wearing a sandwich board with “I HATE EVERYBODY” written on it. You’re probably also familiar with the theatrical cut where it’s a racist slur instead of “EVERYBODY.”
Just to put everyone at ease, fear not, I won’t be typing it out here. If the whole idea was to really start McClane from zero, it’s undoubtedly effective. From what I’ve read, Willis shot the scene with a blank board and the wording was CGI’d in later. This is the first of many scenes in the movie that attempts to tackle race and since I’m not the guy people turn to for this kind of commentary, all I’ll say is it’s all handled in the most 1995 way imaginable. Which is to say while well-intentioned, it does come across as ham-fisted but a lot of movies from this era tackling race do in 2024 so let’s move along before I really start sounding stupid.
Before seeing the idiot wearing the racist sign, we’re in Zeus’ shop where he’s talking to two kids playing hooky from school. One of these kids is a young Aldis Hodge, who returns in A Good Day to Die Hard playing a different character. We’ll address that when we get there, it’s just neat seeing actors who started off young. If you want to see a really good Aldis Hodge performance, he’s great playing Jim Brown the football player in One Night in Miami…
Sorry, I got sidetracked talking Hodge when we were talking Sam Jack. For starters, Zeus Carver is an incredible name and the kind you can only pull off if you’re as cool as Jackson. We watch Zeus go from going about his day as normal to confronting McClane. The walk from his store to the street corner where John is standing is a masterclass acting moment from Jackson as we watch him negotiate with himself before finally walking over. As if he’s saying to himself, “This is looks like a Die Hard movie, am I sure I want to be in a Die Hard movie?”
Thank God he does. There’s a lot of elements making this movie work as well as it does, but the dynamic between Willis and Jackson is the engine that keeps this running. They’re an odd couple in the beginning who slowly to start to bond with each other over how to get around NYC. It’s like a rom-com where the couple has to stop bombs by solving schoolyard riddles together.
Alan Rickman was so pitch-perfect as Hans Gruber in the original, I feel like William Sadler was set up to fail in Die Hard 2, even with the naked tai chi. Making the villain Gruber’s brother feels like the move they should’ve made with Movie Two2, while also being a potentially bad idea on paper. But it’s only bad idea if you don’t cast Jeremy Irons, someone with a voice so magnificent it can carry you fifty minutes into the movie before you actually see his face.
Another thing on paper that could’ve been a disaster is that Simon Gruber is essentially the same type of villain as his brother but on a bigger scale. But just in the way McTiernan seamlessly translates essentially the same setup of the first movie from a skyscraper to a full-blown city, he does the same with Gruber 2.0 without making it feel like a retread. Again, this doesn’t work if you don’t have someone as committed and inherently interesting as Irons. I do love that while he does want revenge for his brother’s death, his desire to steal gold from the Federal Reserve is even stronger.
Like most people around my age, Jeremy Irons has been Scar from The Lion King to me since before I was born. I don’t have my knives out for the live-action Lion King remake like most people do. Part of that is because it’s one of the first movies I took Livy to and while she did sleep for most of it, she woke up at the end to go “Yay movie!” before getting up to dance to the end credits. I didn’t expect the movie to be good so I wasn’t clutching my pearls throughout but the one unforgivable thing they did was make Scar boring. I love Chiwetel Ejiofor, but that performance is flatter than a pancake. Scar is full of personality, evil in the most compelling ways. “Be Prepared” is one of the best numbers in the original and turning it into a short sing-songy speech is a crime.
Sorry, I blacked out for a minute. Back to Die Hard with a Vengeance.
The supporting cast continues to be a strong point with this entry. I’ve been watching Graham Greene do some of his best work for the past couple of years on Reservation Dogs, so it’s fun going back in time to see him play a grizzled cop. Colleen Camp—Yvette the maid from Clue—shows up as does Kevin Chamberlain playing Bomb Expert Who’s a Little Too Into Bombs.
Sam Phillips is the biggest surprise for me, playing Katya, Gruber’s girlfriend/one of his goons. She was the main composer for Gilmore Girls and had a whole career in Contemporary Christian music in the eighties. This is something I only know from binging all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls and listening to the Gilmore Guys podcast. I’d say this is a weird crossover but I feel like it’s possible Lorelai’s thrown out a Die Hard reference or two during the show’s run. I’ll look in into it later.
Taking the action into Canada at the end feels like one turn too many for me in a movie that’s mostly been set in NYC and has done such a great job at exploring that geography. I also don’t like that Gruber and Katya are just killed off quickly in a helicopter crash, something McTiernan wasn’t crazy about either as he felt like they just didn’t take the time to think of a proper ending. There is an alternate ending with McClane torturing Gruber to death that sounds even worse, so I guess we’ll just count this as mostly a win.
It doesn’t surpass the original, but I still had a lot of fun with Die Hard with a Vengeance. It can only go up from here, right?
Haha, right?
So now onto the question: how far would I make it in this Die Hard movie in John McClane’s shoes? Well, for starters I wouldn’t be hungover because drinkin’s a sin. But hypothetically speaking, I would be in way worse shape than McClane appears to be. I’d probably puking so hard into a trash can I’d miss one of Simon’s phone calls and be responsible for several deaths. What I’m starting to gather is I may not be cut out to be the protagonist of a Die Hard film.
It’s crazy watching this in a post-9/11 world. This was also released the same year of the OKC bombing and generated some controversy as a result.
I use “should’ve” loosely because not to keep punching down on a movie that came out 34 years ago, but I don’t think it would’ve been handled as well as it is here.