Following the commercially and critically successful launch of Die Hard 2: Die Harder in 1990, it was inevitable that a third adventure would be contrived for Bruce Willis' working-class cop hero John McClane. What 20th Century Fox didn't realize was that every other movie studio in town was feverishly developing their own action flicks to cash in on the Die Hard formula of a lone-wolf hero vs. terrorists in a confined area. Thus, finding a new arena for McClane became difficult, as the studio kept getting foiled left and right by other action flicks stealing their ideas.

A concept with McClane and wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) enjoying a second honeymoon aboard a cruise ship taken over by terrorists was scrapped after the release of the Steven Seagal vehicle Under Siege in 1992. Another concept, McClane trying to rescue his kidnapped daughter from terrorists ensconced in the storm drains under L.A., was deemed a fizzle at the script stage. Finally, after the release of Speed in 1994 (the directing debut of original Die Hard cinematographer Jan De Bont, as it turned out), they decided to discard the whole "confined area" gimmick of the first two films and hired novice screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh to alter his spec script Simon Says to feature McClane as the hero.

In this film, a bomb blast tears through an empty department store on a hot New York afternoon. Shortly thereafter, a man claiming to be the bomber calls into a local police precinct. He calls himself Simon (voiced with engaging smarm by Jeremy Irons), and makes an odd request...to play a "little game" with one Detective John McClane, or else he threatens to set off more bombs within the city. McClane is quickly ousted from his apartment and ferried off to Harlem by his fellow officers (Larry Bryggman, Graham Green, Colleen Camp) on Simon's orders. Nursing a bad hangover and a recent suspension, McClane is naturally not having a good day, but Simon's first "assignment" is going to make it a lot worse. He forces McClane to walk through a Harlem neighborhood, wearing a sandwich board bearing a particularly unpleasant racial slogan emblazoned upon it. A pawnshop owner named Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) saves McClane from being gutted by a pack of street toughs.

Back at the precinct, Simon calls back to congratulate McClane on surviving and to chastise Zeus for interfering in their game. Zeus naturally tells him to go to hell, and Simon then changes the rules, forcing Zeus to accompany McClane for the rest of the day. They race from one increasingly difficult and absurd mind game to the next across the city, disarming bombs along the way, and getting under each other’s skin as their nerves begin to fray under the pressure.

Sounds like a great concept for a thriller, right? Yeah, but it's not really a Die Hard picture. By jettisoning every supporting character and general concept from the first two, Vengeance feels like what it is: a generic spec script with McClane shoehorned in. Which wouldn't be so objectionable if McClane actually had a personal stake in the outcome of the game (without Holly in jeopardy, one wonders why McClane just doesn't say "fuck it" and walk away at some point), or if Hensleigh's screenplay didn't resort to absurd coincidences to keep the plot moving (funniest moment: McClane and Zeus splitting up to chase different Simon clues, and McClane getting chased through an underground tunnel by a wall of water which pops him like a champagne cork out a manhole that Zeus just happens to be driving by), or if the reveal of the master plan behind Simon's mind games didn't play so sloppily (wouldn't there have been at least a skeleton crew of cops guarding the bomb site at the subway?), or if the direction of John McTiernan (returning to the franchise after being AWOL from Die Harder, which may explain the use of the familiar Civil War standard "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" on the soundtrack) didn't seem startlingly "off", with seizure-cam action sequences, or if the visual effects didn't look so surprisingly cheap and half-assed (particularly the awful boat explosion late in the film), or if the presence of Jackson didn't seem forced into the film just to supply McClane with an unnecessary love/hate male bonding partner.

 Willis remains an engagingly wiseacre hero; the first hour holds together, but by the last 40 minutes, the film is running on fumes, with an especially tepid, reshot final showdown between McClane and Simon (who has a shadowy connection to McClane's past). Compared to the clockwork precision of the plotting in the first two films, Vengeance seems like reheated leftovers. Even Willis' delivery of McClane's trademark catchphrase is perfunctory. Worth a rental for series fans, but nowhere near the classic status of the first two.

Disc Presentation
The film is presented on disc one in an anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer that looks surprisingly "soft" for a Die Hard film. Or maybe it's just a pristine transfer of a visually ugly movie. The 5.1 surround track (available in both Dolby Digital and DTS English and English and French 2.0 stereo) fares better, right from the opening downbeat of The Lovin' Spoonful's classic "Summer In The City" over the opening titles. Explosions, gunshots, screams and the like all sound great, with plenty of subwoofer action. Crank it up and drown out the dialogue.

Disc Extras
Despite being the weakest of the three films, With A Vengeance does sport some solid extras.

Disc One features an audio commentary splicing together sound bites from director John McTiernan, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh, and former president of Fox marketing Tom Sherick. McTiernan is his usual somnambulistic self (I dare you to listen to his yack track on the Thomas Crown Affair DVD without nodding off), but Hensleigh's thoughts about the genesis of his "Simon Says" screenplay and how he shaped it into a Die Hard film is quite interesting.

Disc Two features the following submenus:

Featurettes contains the fluffiest and most skippable stuff. Thecleverly-titled TV Special (21:44) is your typical mid-90s’ EPK geared for filling a half-hour block on HBO or Showtime, sporting the usual congratulatory back-slapping interspersed with too-brief behind-the-scenes clips. Even worse is A Night To Die For (21:35), a cringe-inducing special co-hosted by Reginald VelJohnson (who isn't even in the friggin' movie) and Samuel L. Jackson that basically consists of clips from the first two films and a gaggle of mid-90s’ celebs (including Kato Kaelin!) rhapsodizing about the series. Lastly, there's a 4:09 EPK featurette that isn't worth squat.

-Trailers And TV Spots features 2 trailers and a whopping 10 TV spots (sadly without a "play all" function).

-Alternate Ending is the most fascinating extra, a six-minute epilogue that has McClane hunting down Simon in some European bar and turning his mind games back on him. I can understand why test audiences rejected this as making McClane "too unsympathetic" or for lacking a final big action set piece, but it's much better that the shoddy helicopter shootout in the final cut. This offers optional commentary by Jonathan Hensleigh.

-Interview features Bruce Willis trying to convince viewers that this will be the best Die Hard yet, combined with footage of him fooling around on the set. Also in this section is Villain's Profile, with comments from Jeremy Irons and singer Sam Phillips, cast as the mute henchwoman Katya after John McTiernan saw one of her album covers and thought, "she'd make a good German terrorist". Uh, okay... (Easter Egg: press left on your DVD remote on this submenu, highlight the "Exit" sign on the upper-left-hand corner of the screen, hit "Enter" and be treated to a few minutes' worth of flubbed lines, malfunctioning props, and Willis mugging)

-Visual Effects features the usual assemblage of footage featuring Willis and Jackson emoting in front of a green screen, followed by the final composite shots for The Great Jump, Shimmying Down Cable, Jackson Plummets, Grabbing Onto Crane, Fall In Front Of Taxi, Water Gushing Through Tunnel and Willis Shoots Out Of Tunnel. All this section does is highlight how poor and unconvincing the film's green screen work is.

-Behind The Scenes is the meatiest of the submenus, offering a trio of substantive featurettes highlighting one of the film's major assets: the stunt work and full-scale pyrotechnics.

-Terror In The Subway (8:45) dissects the explosion in the subway, which looks at the derailing subway car and how the stunt team is given very specific marks to hit so they won’t get squashed if something goes awry.

-Prepping The Park (10:22) looks at McClane and Zeus' drive through Central Park in a commandeered taxicab, and their exit (jumping over a pair of parked cars). The look at the specially rigged stunt vehicle/camera car is especially cool.

-Blowing Up Bonwit (7:50) Examines the department store explosion that opens the film, looking at the massive amount of planning that went into staging a full-scale explosion on a busy New York street (although seeing a NYC street covered with ash and debris has a more morbid tone now than it originally did 12 years ago).

Finishing off this section and the disc is a collection of animated Storyboards for the sequence with McClane being chased through the underground tunnel by a wall of water.

The Bottom Line
While not without it's skillful sequences (I'm especially fond of a beautifully-choreographed bit with McClane improvising his way out of a tight situation with five bad guys in an elevator), With A Vengeance doesn't hold up to repeat viewings like the first two Die Hard films, and it looks surprisingly cheap today.

		Die Hard with a Vengeance (Special Edition)
3		Feature - Stitched-together threequel is fun in bits and pieces, but falls apart under scrutiny.
3.5		Video - Surprisingly soft, although that may be due to the film's mediocre visual effects.
4.5		Audio - Plenty of bangs for the buck, with excellent use of the surround speakers and subwoofer.
4		Extras - Some substantive featurettes, commentary, and an all-interesting alternate ending.

4.5