I love this film, maybe the most entertaining Die Hard of them all.

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2008)

Die Hard: With a Vengeance is set in New York City where cop Lieutenant John McClane (Bruce Willis) gets caught up in a deadly game of cat & mouse with mad terrorist bomber Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), holding the city & police department to ransom with the threat of large bombs going off in very public places John is forced to go along with whatever Simon says, also along for the ride is Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) who inadvertently helped McClane escape from one of Simon's traps & becomes part of his game. As McClane & Zues race around the city doing everything Simon says the police are busy searching schools for a huge bomb planted in one Simon's attention turns to the Federal Gold Reserve which has been left totally unguarded...
Co-produced & directed by John McTiernan I will say straight away that Die Hard: With a Vengeance is my favourite Die Hard film, I will maybe accept that the original Die Hard (1988) is perhaps the slightly better film but as far as I'm concerned I think Die Hard: With a Vengeance is my overall favourite & I'd sooner sit down & watch this again than sit down & watch the original again. The script by Jonathan Hensleigh is the single most action packed film I've ever seen, from the opening couple of minutes which we gets some cool views of New York City which is suddenly & unexpectedly interrupted by a huge bomb going off to an action packed climax featuring an exploding helicopter & McClane uttering his iconic line 'yippie-kay-yay mother f-cker' Die Hard: With a Vengeance never, & I mean never lets up for a second. Beside being the most action packed film I've seen Die Hard: With a Vengeance wisely tries to do something different with the whole Die Hard scenario, after Die Hard 2 (1990) which was very similar to the original film Die Hard: With a Vengeance feels much fresher, the whole Christmas thing is absent, McClane's annoying wife is nowhere to be seen neither is that reporter Dick Thornberg & the film isn't tied down to a single location as the action takes place all over New York state. I also think it was a great move to give McClane a sidekick to work against, the fact Zeus is black & there's a certain racial tension between them is used to very funny effect & the whole mismatched partner thing has been done to death but rarely as good as it is here. I just love this film & I cannot think of one single bad thing to say about it, it moves like a rocket, there's enough action to fill a dozen lesser Hollywood blockbusters, it also has a nice edge to it as there's some funny dialogue & plenty of bad language as well as plenty of hard bloody violence which the latest in the series Live Free or Die Hard (2007) was sorely lacking.
Director McTiernan is back on-board after directing the original Die Hard & he turns in a breathless roller-coaster ride of an action flick, has it ever been bettered in terms of pure adrenaline pumping action scenes? The only time it became really silly was when McClane & Zeus seemingly fall 100's of feet onto a metal cargo ship container which in reality would have broken every bone in their bodies but hey, it's just a film right? Almost every type of action sequence you can think of is here, car chases, shoot-outs, fights, huge explosions, jumping onto moving trains & boats, surfing on top of huge dumper trucks (!), train wrecks & a taxi ride through Central Park in a cool sequence amongst many cool sequences. The violence is pretty hard & bloody at times, from slashed throats to bad guy's having their heads shot off. The profanity is also very strong (as long as your not watching one of the awful censored UK versions) with the constant use of the 'F' word, it does lead to some very funny dialogue & exchanges between character's though!
With a supposed budget of about $90,000,000 one has to say you can see all that on screen, in fact watching it again last night I would have thought it was a 100 plus million budgeted film. Considering past events I very much doubt a film about a mad terrorist setting off bombs in New York would get made today, luckily it was made in '96 so we weren't denied one of the greatest action films ever due to unfortunate events. Willis was paid a cool 15 million to reprise his role & he puts in a great performance, no-one can say a one-liner like him! Samuel L. Jackson is very funny as well & puts in another fine performance, I could just watch these two shout, swear & argue with each other all day!
Die Hard: With a Vengeance is in my humble opinion maybe the greatest action film from the 90's & certainly one of the best ever made, it's literally none stop. I mean if you want action then this is the film for you, I honestly can't think of anything bad to say about it. To my eyes Die Hard: With a Vengeance is just about the perfect action film & it's as simple & straight forward as that.