Five years went by, and no second Die Hard sequel was forthcoming, not even in a world of Die Hard clones.
In the meantime, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh devised a spec script called Simon Says. Concerning a mad bomber forcing a cop to play high-stake childish games, it was a hotly sought-after commodity. Producer Joel Silver considered using it as the basis for his fourth Lethal Weapon movie, what with a comic multiracial pairing and all. Rather, they went and made it the third Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Simon Says was not conceived to ape Die Hard, at least not in the structural specifics. Despite its unrelated origin (and keep in mind the first two Die Hards are adaptations of unrelated novels), Die Hard with a Vengeance has many little grace notes which make it a far more effective Die Hard sequel than Die Hard 2 was. Of course, Hensleigh’s retooling of the Simon Says script to accommodate the Die Hard formula yields some problems as well, but we’ll get to all of those in turn. Though it’s not many films where you can say the script is both the best and the worst thing about it.
The other really great thing about With a Vengeance is the welcome return of John McTiernan in the director’s chair. He reinvigorates With a Vengeance with the believable feel of Die Hard, and imbues it with a far greater sense of place.
That setting: New York City. If you are struggling for a designator, this could be “Die Hard in New York,” only that is a little broad for the definition. Especially when it’s daytime, the whole city is in play, and hostage-taking terrorists are replaced with a single, disembodied bomber. But New York is not an arbitrary setting, as this is John McClane’s home turf (Bruce Willis, natch). Far from the “cop out of water” of Part One’s L.A., or the “whatever” of Two’s D.C., N.Y. sees McClane on home field, in his element – it’s a chance to explore a unique side of his personality.
The first half or so of With a Vengeance follows Simon Says most lavishly, with the only major change being the presence of John McClane over a generic cop hero. (With that alteration, certain new details emerge, but to little end.) With one bomb having already gone off (a nice introductory promise of action without forcing a needing opening action salvo), Simon (the disembodied dulcet tones of Jeremy Irons) specifically demands Officer John McClane perform a series of tasks for him – lest another explosion take place somewhere in New York. Which effectively takes the whole city hostage, only not. And even without knowing the greater plot importance yet, McClane is not here arbitrarily, already fixing the greatest hurdle of 2.
Simon’s tasks largely revolve around children’s riddles (a nice counterpoint to the machismo inherent in a Die Hard). He forces McClane to rush from phone to phone, a notion likely obtained from Dirty Harry. These tasks are elegant in their danger. McClane’s first chore, for instance, involves wearing an offensive racial sign in Harlem. What other big budget Hollywood actioner would use that as its first set piece?
Stirring up gang anger, McClane is only saved by the interference of electrician Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson!), and another of With a Vengeance’s major saving graces comes into play. Zeus is the most interesting figure in this series, excepting McClane himself and the incomparable Hans Gruber. At Simon’s insistence, Zeus becomes McClane’s unwitting partner, despite a mutual hatred based more on deep-seated racial mistrust than any bargain basement Lethal Weapon mismatching. It’s no accident Jackson’s wardrobe invokes Malcolm X. The racial stuff is a great textual addition to a Die Hard, in the sense that Part One had greater ideas floating around its head as well. It never amounts to much, but it is a nice undercurrent which unifies the assorted set pieces.
Even ignoring that, Zeus is invaluable to the picture. For one thing, his partnering with McClane is laugh-out-loud funny, possibly even more so than the assorted moments of levity in Die Hard – it’s the McTiernan touch, which is so very hard to do without stripping the fundamental weight of the action.
As for McClane, three times out against the biggest stunts and explosions Hollywood can cook up, he starts to lose a bit of his original everyman charm, even more so than in 2. That’s even with With a Vengeance stacking the decks against him, substituting a hangover for jetlag and bare feet. We just know McClane will make it through, something McClane himself seems aware of: He is more eager to commit death-defying acts than ever, leaping onto speeding subway trains and driving off of bridges with sudden abandon.
But that’s where Zeus comes in – again. He is a civilian, armed with some Harlem-earned street smarts, but no police training and no familiarity with insane, McTiernan-style danger. He is our everyman, which lets With a Vengeance maintain the tenor of Part One without sacrificing the evolution of John McClane as an action superhero.
So the two bicker, at their different stages in the evolution of the action hero. And with characters patiently established (done with far more elegance than the choppy exposition in Die Hard 2), McTiernan et al can let fly and let With a Vengeance play out – with a vengeance. Charged with reaching a too-distant pay phone in Wall Street on a time frame, McClane commandeers a taxi for one of the most unusual, distinct car scenes I know of. It’s no chase, and as a race it’s hampered by traffic and obstacles, negating pure speed. Rather, McClane and Zeus both use their familiarity with Manhattan to work out unusual solutions – driving through Central Park, ambulance chasing, etc. It is a bravura moment, the best of With a Vengeance, and it comes wholly of the original Simon Says. With McTiernan’s skill at presenting New York at the start of the Giuliani era (complete, uncomfortably, with the Word Trade Center omnipresent in the background throughout), this adds up to action moviemaking at its finest.
The mad dash to Wall Street isn’t just confined to the world’s most manic episode of “Cash Cab.” Rather, McClane bails midway for the aforementioned subway train boarding, to find the bomb Simon has promised. The adrenaline builds throughout, until everything converges in a Wall Street station. The bomb goes off, but non-lethally thanks to McClane’s actions, and a fantastic amount of destruction unspools for our pleasure.
This is where Simon Says starts to transform into Die Hard with a Vengeance. With that, this is where the problems start to creep in.
Now is where With a Vengeance truly identifies itself as a Die Hard SEQUEL, even as it is NOT a “Die Hard on a _____.” The FBI makes its expected (though brief) entrance, to inform McClane as to Simon’s identity. “Simon Krieg was born Simon Peter Gruber. He’s Hans Gruber’s brother…Yeah, it’s that thing in L.A.” The Vengeance part becomes clear now, that Simon wants McClane dead over the actions in Part One. Though it’s a one-time-only ploy, this legitimizes the further adventures of John McClane, when endless coincidences concerning terrorist plots would not.
Also, Hensleigh correctly identifies the heist as a Die Hard standard – something 2 rather lacks. So as McClane and the general mass of police officers rush away – responding to Simon’s latest threat of exploding a school at the end of the school day – Simon becomes a physical presence, as his squad of (say it with me) elite international terrorists descends upon Wall Street.
Heinsleigh found a way to incorporate a robbery into Simon Says. Utilizing the circumstances created by the subway bombing, Simon’s crew manages to purloin the United States Federal Reserve of all its gold bullion - $140 billion! It’s an impressively thought-out crime, done with typical Die Hard intelligence. Actually, so plausible is this act, the true FBI contacted Heinsleigh to address its real world feasibility.
McTiernan helps the scene out, scoring it with the Civil War march “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” As Die Hard employed Beethoven, so does With a Vengeance this. Notably, all McTiernan’s musical selections derive from Stanley Kubrick movies, this choice coming from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This is the sort of minor detail Die Hard was built upon.
Everything still sounds pretty solid, but that’s because the film’s quality evaporates slowly and imperceptibly. Out running Simon’s next assignment, McClane has a sudden epiphany courtesy of the numerous Christmas references – despite this one not taking place during Christmas, as otherwise the whole school scenario wouldn’t be possible. (And bully to them for nixing that holiday, as it encourages coincidences.) Nope, McClane works out that Simon has a grander scheme in mind than mere revenge, and returns to Wall Street to prove it. The robbery’s already come and gone, but some disguised terrorists remain – and they decide now the time has come to kill McClane. At last, well over an hour in, we have our first shootout, nicely tense in the tight confines of an elevator. But after all the creative actioning of i, McClane blowing four guys away in under a minute seems a little desultory.
The chase is on! McClane and Zeus give up on kids’ games, and instead pursue Simon’s fleet of gold-hauling dump trucks on their way out of Manhattan. And Die Hard with a Vengeance becomes a much more typical action movie, though one produced with the utmost craftsmanship. One problem, which Hensleigh himself admits to, is that this new predicament moves the action further and further away from New York, which inversely affects its quality. Such are the difficulties of a gold heist premise, of playing out the Goldfinger idea to its logical conclusion. To succeed, Simon must transport a massive amount of goods to some…indeterminate location. The only thing providing narrative drive now is the continued bomb threat at the school, with McClane intent to capture Simon and “beat that fucking code out of him.”
There are interesting action beats in this second half, as McTiernan et al remain dedicated to delivering variety. This means there isn’t another shootout like the one we’ve gotten. There is a pretty basic car chase, but it’s tempered with more outré moments like McClane outrunning an underground tidal wave, or Zeus proposing they use a tow cable to climb onto a moving cargo ship (this one doesn’t work out flawlessly).
This cargo ship – the final stage in Simon’s undercover shipping operation – is host to a sort of condensed “Die Hard on a ____,” as McClane proves he can still do the “isolated setting and mercenaries” thing with the best of ‘em, though he’s now largely evolved beyond it. And this is with the school day’s end but minutes away, as every threat With a Vengeance has built up is converges. Credit to McTiernan, for sometimes there isn’t actually that much action on display, but it never feels underwhelming – the man can make the connective tissue between set pieces feel like set pieces, which is why With a Vengenace is invigorating while Die Hard 2 has so many dead spots.
And it all comes to a head when…actually, that’s hard to say. Henleigh surely wasn’t certain. He had a notoriously difficult time devising a satisfactory ending for With a Vengeance, a relic of starting with one movie, then abruptly switching its trajectory halfway through. Whatever the case is, With a Vengeance does not end here on the cargo ship, even while a ridiculously massive explosion would normally signify the end of a ‘90s actioner.
Nope, like a James Bond movie (like Goldfinger, say), there’s a post-climax action sequence, where the grudge between McClane and Simon is satisfied once and for all. (John McClane is the blue collar Bond, basically; his badge number is even 0077!) As it stands in the final film, that confrontation occurs in Canada – A Die Hard concluding in Canada?! This is such a bizarre notion! Though the original ending was further afield, in the heart of the beast, Germany – and you can see it for yourself! It’s a decently tense moment, but it surely isn’t a fitting conclusion for a Die Hard movie. The Canadian ending isn’t 100% better, as it’s difficult to fashion a wholly engaging action sequence in a few minutes with minimum context.
Either way, John McClane concludes by saying “Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker,” which is all we need.
(And yes, with Samuel L. Jackson in the ranks, the word “motherfucker” gets trotted out more often than just that once.)
Die Hard with a Vengeance has expert moments. The action sequences are top notch, and the characters are more interesting than they have any right to be. What trips it up is the mere need to be a Die Hard movie, which starts that gold smuggling thread, which leads to confused endings. But that’s the Catch 22, motherfucker. Not as a Die Hard, but as Simon Says, it’s likely this wouldn’t have been made. So we have a compromised rendering of an original script. Or we have another fun outing with John McClane, which does a decent job (like many Part Threes) of lifting the series up after a misdirected Part Two.
What we don’t have is the impetus to continue on as a series. Die Hard 2 came about as a sudden response to the first’s success, and left nowhere to go. With a Vengeance only exists by the fluke existence of a decent unrelated script. (Actually, I’m led to believe many Hollywood sequels have similar origins.) Further independent ideas could get refashioned as new Die Hards, but only as long as its style of action remained in vogue. And with other producers milking dry the Die Hard formula with lesser copycats, it was time for a period of hibernation.
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