Die Hard with a Vengeance (also known as Die Hard 3), is the third film in the Die Hard series starring
Bruce Willis as policeman John McClane, released in
1995. Vengeance introduces Samuel L.
Jackson as Zeus Carver, Willis' reluctant partner. Jeremy Irons plays the main villain, Simon Gruber. It was directed by John
McTiernan and written by Jonathan Hensleigh. It was followed by
Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
Plot
The antagonist in this movie is Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), brother of Hans Gruber
(Alan Rickman, who, like Irons, was an English actor playing a German). Hans was a German
criminal who was killed by NYPD cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) at the
climax of Die Hard, the first film in the series. It first appears as though Simon is
out to avenge his brother's death, but it is later revealed that other motives are at work.
He begins by blowing up a bomb in a department store and telling Inspector Walter Cobb, calling himself "Simon", that McClane
must walk through Harlem displaying a sandwich board reading "I hate niggers", or expect 'another big bang at a
public place'. When some offended African Americans threaten him, they are held back at gunpoint by shopkeeper and African
American activist Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson). Carver gets McClane away, not out
of concern for a white man, but that the colleagues of a white cop might go gunning for every black person in the area if one of
their own is killed; "One white cop dies in Harlem, tomorrow we got a thousand white cops, all of 'em with itchy trigger
fingers." Back at the police station, Simon calls and insists that this "Good
Samaritan" has become part of the game whether he likes it or not.
Simon has planted real as well as 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 them.
The first game happens at a public telephone. Simon calls and reads them the As I
Was Going to St Ives riddle. To answer the riddle, McClane needs to dial 555 followed by the answer within 30 seconds. They make the call, but are 10 seconds late. Simon
laughs and says there is no bomb, since he "didn't say 'Simon Says'."
Zeus and John listening to Simon on the pay phone
McClane is told they have half an hour to go to a phone at a subway station near
Wall Street from where they are on the upper west side. To do this, McClane commandeers a
taxi and drives through Central Park, and makes a radio call for an ambulance which they
follow through heavy traffic. McClane later manages to climb into the subway train from a grating and finds the bomb, quickly
chucking it out the train window. Only Zeus makes it to the station to pick up the call. Simon says that McClane's absence is a
breach of the rules and the bomb is detonated, however he had intended for the bomb to detonate regardless, since an activation
switch was placed on the subway tracks to detonate the bomb once the subway car hit the switch. Only the audience is aware of the
fact at this time.
After the bomb is detonated, they must go to another park to answer another riddle. This time, Simon says "What has four legs
and is always ready to travel?" Zeus figures out that it is an elephant, and they find a briefcase bomb in an elephant fountain
in the park. After a short argument on whether or not to open the briefcase, John decides to open it. When he does, an LCD screen
reads "I am a bomb. You have just armed me." Simon then calls them again, telling them that they must use a 5 gallon and a 3
gallon jug to put exactly 4 gallons of water on the bomb's scale to disarm it, which they do in the nick of time.
When Simon next calls, he states that there is a bomb within one of the schools in New York. They must not evacuate schools,
but the police start a massive search for the bomb. Simon's next riddle is "What is 21 out of 42?", and Zeus figures out that
there have been 42 Presidents of the United States but is unable to
remember who the 21st was. Later, a truck driver tells McClane he was Chester A.
Arthur, and it identifies a school in which Simon claims to have placed a bomb — it is later found to be Chester A. Arthur
Elementary School, the very school where Zeus' two nephews happen to be attending.
As Zeus and McClane are traveling between destinations, McClane catches and reprimands a boy for stealing a candy bar in plain
sight. The boy comments that every cop in the city is searching the schools and one could, as the boy puts it, "steal City Hall".
McClane abruptly realizes the nature of Simon's plan.
So far the police have been led to believe that all this is an overblown act of revenge. However, it is really a diversion
from Simon's real goal: to rob the high-security vault in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which holds the gold reserves of many nations, even
more than Fort Knox. The need to search the thousands of schools in New York, none of which
are located in the financial district, means that the police, emergency and Federal agencies are all occupied elsewhere. This
enables Simon and his army of East European mercenaries to break into the vault and make their
escape with a dozen dump trucks filled to the brim with gold bars.
McClane and Carver see through the plan and catch up with the gang as they embark their trucks on board a ship. They are
captured and left on the ship with a huge bomb. When McClane first sees this bomb, he realizes that there is no bomb in a school
- the bomb that police found in the school is an elaborate dummy filled with pancake syrup. Simon advises McClane that "some
gentlemen in the Middle East seem to think they'll make a lot of money" when a substantial portion of the world's gold reserves
are destroyed. Carver asks what this has to do with killing McClane to which Simon replies, "Life has its little bonuses". The
two men are left handcuffed to each other sitting astride the bomb.
At this point they hold a heart-to-heart, with McClane admitting that he and his wife are yet again estranged, and Carver
trying to convince him to try to at least call her. They both manage to get off the ship just as the bomb explodes, destroying
the ship.
Simon has (via a taped message transmitted over the ship's radio) led the authorities to believe that the gold was still
aboard the ship and that the whole affair was a plot to upset the world economy. However, McClane surmises that it is yet another
diversion and that the gold is safe elsewhere, based on experience with Simon's brother, Hans. After suffering a horrible
headache all day, McClane had finally managed to obtain a bottle of aspirin from Simon himself. Based on Carver's prompting,
McClane then calls his estranged wife. As the call is connecting, McClane goes to take one of the pills, and a label on the
bottom of the bottle shows that they were purchased from a pharmacy in Quebec, Canada. McClane is forced to leave the phone to
pursue Simon, and leaves his wife hanging on the line. This leads the action to a warehouse in Canada where Simon and his gang
have indeed taken the gold. There they witness Simon's gang being caught by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police before being attacked by Simon in a helicopter. The final
battle ensues and as the helicopter hovers underneath some power lines, McClane cleverly shoots out the power lines with two
shots, destroying the helicopter, and sending Simon to join his late brother.
As the film ends, McClane calls his wife on a nearby pay phone, despite worrying about the fact that he left her on hold. The
credits roll as the call is connecting.
Cast
Script & setting
This movie 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
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 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.
Original ending
The original ending was filmed and 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.
In this version the crook has dumped or double-crossed most of his accomplices, got 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 the cop
still manages to track him down to his foreign hideaway. This is reminiscent of Alec
Guiness' situation in the British heist movie The Lavender Hill Mob
made some 45 years earlier.
McClane has tracked Simon using the batch number on the bottle of aspirins. This original ending takes place either in
Hungary, because Simon talks to the natives in Hungarian: "Nagyon kedves, köszönöm" (very nice,
thank you) and "Rögtön" (right now), each of which can be identified clearly, or in Germany,
because McClane mentions that he has traced the batch number on the bottle of aspirin to "a German pharmacy".
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. At the very end of the sequence, it's revealed that McClane was wearing a flak
jacket the entire time, and could not have been killed by the rocket launcher.
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.
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's 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.
Production Notes
- On the DVD commentary, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh says the idea for the film's plot came to him when he imagined what
would happen if one of his childhood friends, who was injured after Hensleigh threw a rock at him, decided to seek revenge on him
as an adult.
- The protagonist in Hensleigh's original Simon Says script was a New York cop named Alex Bradshaw, and the character
that became Zeus Carver was a woman. The film studio wanted Hensleigh to change Zeus's race from black to either white or
Asian.
- The scene where John McClane (Willis) wears the sandwich board that says "I Hate Niggers" was filmed in Washington Heights in order to avoid any conflict/riot in Harlem. The street signs along Audubon
Avenue between 173rd and 177th Streets, along with several store awnings and signs, were replaced to replicate Harlem.
Additionally, the sandwich board that Willis wore was blank. The slogan was digitally added to the board during
post-production.
- In the director commentary, director McTiernan states that future Vice
President Dick Cheney makes an uncredited cameo in the film.
- Hensleigh and the production where questioned by the FBI due to the accuracy of the robbery details found in the script.
Since the production had used actual blue prints in formulating the robbery to ensure its accuracy, apparently it was too
accurate as such a plan could actually work.
Trivia
- The chase scenes in the tunnel were filmed in New York City Water Tunnel
No. 3, a then-unfinished tunnel connecting the city to reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.
- Character "Dr. Fred Schiller" is a reference to the 18th century German poet Friedrich Schiller, who wrote the lyrics used by
Ludwig van Beethoven in his 9th symphony, which is used in Die Hard (1988).
- When the bomb goes off in the Bonwit Teller department store, there is an "Atlantic
Courier" truck parked in front of the store that gets flipped over. In Die Hard, Hans Gruber
and the other terrorists arrive at Nakatomi Plaza in a "Pacific Courier" truck.
- Director John McTiernan considered either editing out the beginning bombing of the department store, or moving the release
date back as they felt that the American public might still be sensitive to bombing due to closeness of dates of the Oklahoma
City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
- Simon calls a radio announcer to report that there is a bomb in a school. The name of the announcer is Elvis Duran, an actual
radio announcer on the station Z100 (100.3 FM).
- Early drafts for the screenplay were based on the novel Troubleshooter which involved terrorists seizing control of a
Caribbean cruise ship.
- Director John McTiernan acknowledged the errors concerning the gold in the dump trucks and its respective weight. McTiernan
and Samuel L. Jackson were permitted to lift a genuine bar of gold to get a feel of how heavy gold really was.
- The sex scene between Jeremy Irons and Sam Phillips was added in at the last minute because McTiernan knew that the film
would get an R rating and he might as well put a sex scene in.
- Although he wasn't hired for the film, Alan Rickman is still credited as playing
Hans Gruber (in McClane's flashback). Rickman's appearance is in pre-existing footage from the
original Die Hard.
- During its Pay Per View run in 1996, a bonus featurette followed the presentation of the movie which included footage of some
scenes with additional dialogue such as the scene in the Federal Reserve Bank where Felix Little asks "You're in the flower
business, Mr. Vanderflug?" and added is Simon replying "It's Vanderfluge, it rhymes with tulip." explaining why Felix pronounces
the name correctly from that point on. This featurette is not included in the Special Edition DVD.
- The park on top of the Wall Street station in the film was a vacant lot that was made into a park for the film. It was turned
back into a vacant lot after filming was completed.
- When Simon, posing as the city engineer, meets Ricky Walsh, you can see a blurry but visible red sign on the building in the
background. This is the Home Insurance Company building and that company purchased the red cover so that it would be seen in the
movie as they felt that the original bronze signage would not be visible.
- Laurence Fishburne was the original choice to play Zeus Carver, but turned down
the part. When he reconsidered the decision, Samuel L. Jackson was already cast.
- In the DVD commentary, Jonathan Hensleigh says that the first hour of the film is his original "Simon Says" script word for
word. He only changed the characters from the script, so that it would actually feel a part of the "Die Hard" series.
- Samuel L. Jackson's look in the film was Jackson's idea after he'd done extensive research on his character by studying books
on Malcolm X.
- The music playing on the stereo when the two kids come into Zeus's (Samuel Jackson's) store at the beginning of the movie,
right before Zeus and John McClain first meet, is Thelonius Monk's "We See".
- Jonathan Hensleigh was actually detained by the FBI after completing the script for the film because he knew extensive
information about the Federal Gold Reserve in Downtown Manhattan. Hensleigh stated that he got all the information from an
article written in The New York Times.
- Sam Phillips, in real life a pop singer, was invited to test for the role based upon a photo from one of her CD covers.
- The bridge from which McClane and Zeus jump to the container ship in the harbor is the Cooper River Bridge that connects
Charleston and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. A new bridge opened in July 2005, and the two pre-existing bridges that have long
been a symbol of Charleston will be removed. Much of the film was shot in the Charleston area, including the subway station which
was built on a stage in Mount Pleasant. The Cooper River Bridge scenes were set on an unnamed bridge near Bridgeport, CT, on Long
Island Sound.
- As in the first Die Hard, the German spoken in this movie is mostly grammatically incorrect. A few lines are so wrong
that they have to be considered gibberish (most notably the exchange of the fake cops, who are given the briefcase bomb by Zeus
(Samuel L. Jackson). In the German release, however, all of the lines that were German in the original movie are grammatically
correct, fitting the context and some of the terrorists even have an East German accent.
- The Russian title for Die Hard for all 4 movies is, A Hard Nut to Crack.
- The R2 DVD was originally released with a TV-like edit with all swearing removed and key scenes like the elevator gunfight
cut out. The DVDs were all recalled then released as the original edit.
- The producers planned to blow up the Hutchinson River Parkway tollbooth
structure for a scene in the movie. The tolls were to be eliminated anyway, and then-Governor Mario
Cuomo volunteered to push the switch. But opposition from local residents in close proximity and from other officials
killed the idea.
- Jeremy Irons replaced David Thewlis
- There is a war reference in each of the first three Die Hard films. This film's is when the FBI agent references the
Battle of the Bulge.
- Despite not being set at Christmas it still references the previous films (which were set at Christmas) with sarcastic
comments regarding Santa Claus. The shoplifting kids also states that "It is Christmas, you could steal city hall."
- In the scene where the police are informed of the school bomb, one of the police officials is played by none other than the
late Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's (who went uncredited for this participation)
- WILHELM SCREAM: As they are driving through the park Zeus asks McClane if he is aiming for the people, to which McClane
replies, "No... maybe that mime." An abbreviated Wilhelm Scream can be heard immediately following the "No."
- The taxi (No. 2T94) that is driven by Samuel L. Jackson is the same one that Jack Nicholson hails to take Helen Hunt and her
child to the hospital in As Good as It Gets (1997).
- There are two solutions to the water jug riddle in the park, at the elephant fountain. To place exactly 4 gallons of water on
the scales when you only have two jugs which hold 3 and 5 gallons respectively, you must do either of the following. 1. Fill the
5 gallon jug and decant the water into the 3 gallon jug. This leaves two gallons in the big jug. 2. Empty the 3 gallon jug and
pour in the two gallons from the 5 gallon jug, leaving space for one gallon in the small jug. 3. Refill the 5 gallon jug and pour
water from it into the 3 gallon jug until the small jug's full. 4. That leaves exactly four gallons in the big jug; put it on the
scale and the bomb is disarmed. The second method is: 1. Fill the 3 gallon jug and pour the water into the 5 gallon jug. 2.
Refill the 3 gallon jug, and pour into the 5 gallon jug until the big jug is full, leaving one gallon in the small jug. 3. Empty
the big jug, and transfer the one gallon from the small jug to the big jug. 4. Refill the small jug and pour all three gallons
into the 5 gallon jug, resulting in four gallons in the big jug. Place the big jug on the scale and the bomb is disarmed.
- McClane (Bruce Willis) tells Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) "I was livin' on a nice fat pension, smoking cigarettes and watching
Captain Kangaroo." The second line is from the song "Flowers on the Wall" by The Statler Brothers from the soundtrack of
Pulp Fiction (1994), starring both Willis and Jackson. Willis' character (Butch) sang the song in Fabienne's car when he
spotted Marsellus Wallace.
- Sean Connery was John McTiernan's very first choice for the role of Simon Gruber. He turned down the role, saying that he
didn't want to play such a diabolical villain.
References
[Worldwide DVD
Forums]
External links
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