Die Hard with a Vengeance is a 1995 action film and the second sequel in the Die Hard series. It was produced and directed by John McTiernan, who directed the first film and stars Bruce Willis as NYPD detective John McClane. Vengeance 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.
Plot
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 walk through Harlem wearing a sandwich board displaying racist slurs. Before McClane can be beaten by a group of outraged residents, Harlem shopkeeper and black supremacist 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, 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, his mistress Katya, 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 are captured by Simon when they try to sneak aboard the tanker, and are tied 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.
Cast
Script and setting
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.
Alternate endings
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's likely that the relatively low-velocity rocket wouldn't 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'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.
Reception
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.[1] Critical reception was similar to that of the previous film. Most critics were in favor that the film was an effective actioner, though not up to the standards of the first film. Some critics, however, felt that the film relied too heavily on unrealistic coincidences. Fans and critics are divided over whether or not this film is better than the second. Some who were disappointed by Die Hard 2 felt it was an improvement while others felt it was a step down in quality.
References
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