Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

In 1995, Bruce Willis once again joined forces with director John McTiernan to give us the third adventure in the unlucky life of Detective John McClane. This time, John McClane is apparently the source of the terrorism and he is forced to play a game piece in a sick set of twisted puzzles created for what seems to be little more than punishing him for killing our new protagonist's brother Hans Gruber. However, not all is as it seems and the director and co. give us a few surprises along the way. The third installment in the widely popular series gave us what the second one should have, a sequel that was bigger than the first one while bringing some originality to the series. This one does not rehash the same tired story with ol' Johnny stuck in an impossible situation trying to survive and hopefully come out on top. The simple idea was to take an impossible situation and instead of putting our hero into the mix we get to see that he IS the situation. His actions from the first movie have come back to revisit him tenfold. It makes this one a memorable and freshly inventive addition to a series that could not survive another old and tired sequel. With John McClane returning as our only original character, we get to see a new and different guy. A guy who has lost his wife and children and really has little to get up for than to drink himself to death day after day. He is no longing that happy and upbeat guy we seen in our first two adventures. This lends a freshness to the whole thing while making you realize that, despite having nothing to live for, he still does his best to save the day. Joining John is a new and unwitting adventurer Zeus, played by the great and iconic Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel gives us another entertaining character to cheer for and he does an amazing job injecting a renewed energy to our hero's story. The two of them together almost make this one feel like a good buddy movie with shades of Lethal Weapon. Jeremy Irons as Hans Gruber's brother Simon is another reason this is the sequel that should have been made five years earlier. He does a splendid job. So to put it simply, this is the sequel we all wanted to see. It is a fun and inventive story that comes close to what the original did. It is bigger, but not better. However, I do not think you could come much closer to the first Die Hard than this one did. It is easily the second best in the series.

The "Die Hard" series is one of the most popular in the action movie genre over the last 30 years. 1995's "Die Hard with a Vengeance" is the middle entry out of five movies to date. The first movie set the template and the second didn't stray far from the original premise but I guess they felt that they had to change things up for the third entry.This time around, NYPD detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is once again the focal character but he's joined by Samuel L. Jackson as another guy who's basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a result, rather than McClane being more or less on his own like we're used to, the movie feels more like a buddy cop movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, and there are certainly a lot worse buddies you could have than Samuel L. Jackson. However, in my mind, this departure makes the movie seem a little less like a "Die Hard" movie.Despite this change, the movie still calls back to the original by featuring a storyline that pits McClane against Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), the brother of original villain Hans Gruber. Past Oscar-winner Irons makes a memorable villain in his own right but he'd be hard-pressed to top Alan Rickman's iconic performance. In fact, both Irons & Jackson prove to be excellent additions to the cast but, that being said, I did find it a bit disappointing that Willis was the only returnee from the first two movies. Again, this is something that I felt made this movie seem less like a continuation of "Die Hard" and more like something else entirely that someone went out of their way to fashion into a "Die Hard" movie.Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh on the moviemakers for trying something a bit different here. Taken on it's own merits, "Die Hard with a Vengeance" is a perfectly serviceable action movie, above average even. My only real complaints with the plot are that the villain's scheme is preposterously intricate and the final showdown is over the top. These don't ruin a movie that is essentially well made overall. Of course, when you're dealing with a sequel it's only natural to compare with the original and that comparison is rarely ever favorable for the sequel. Altogether, "Die Hard with a Vengeance" is a pretty good action movie and if it isn't as good as what came before it, it's at least better than what came after.

This Die Hard with a Vengeance movie is the only Die Hard sequel really worth seeing, because the original Die Hard is so incredibly good that it is hard to live up to. For anyone who loves big action movies this sequel is an excellent choice! Guaranteed good time.The story of this sequel is really clever. Lots of funny unexepected twists and turns. The action is over the top like it should be in any Die Hard sequel. The acting of Jeremy Irons and Samuel Jackson is superb and Bruce Willis is as funny as ever. As a tourist from Europe I vistited New York when Die Hard with a Vengeance was just released. I took a cab in Manhattan and I couldnt believe what was happening when my cabdriver followed a speeding ambulance through traffic. Wild stuff.Then I went to see this Die Hard movie in a New York cinema and realized that my cabdriver had been copying a scene from the movie ! I love New York !

This was a fitting end to a trilogy until they wrongly decided to continue with the series, with further moviews, which basically ruined the Die Hard franchise. Die Hard with a Vengeance is a unique film just like its previous editions. Die Hard was based inside a tall building; Die Hard 2 was based inside an airport; and Die Hard 3 was based within an entire city (New York). The villain was great: his name is Simon Gruber who is the brother of Hans Gruber, so this film has ties to the first one, so it makes it more interesting to follow. In the previous Die Hard movies, Bruce on his own was hard enough, but in Die Hard with a Vengeance, despite having Samuel Jackson along with him on this journey, they were still no match for the villain (or were they?). Though Die Hard with a Vengeance was a good movie, I still don't think it's better than its predecessors. If Die Hard was a great Christmas movie, or a great movie for the winter season, then Die Hard with a Vengeance was a great action movie for the summer.