The day that action films died

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2000)

Most viewers remember the high-octane action films that were being pumped out of hollywood. Most copied Die-Hard's uniqueness and made copies of the story. They would effectively be referred to as "Try Hard's" (because they tried hard to copy die hard) or "Die-Hard-On-A" (ie. Speed is Die-Hard-on-a-Bus, Under Siege is Die-Hard-On-A-Battleship).
This was, in my view, the last "Try Hard" film. This film did not do too well in the states, this was because of a number of things:
1) The okhaloma bombing of 1994/1995, and 2) Willis' boredom of action films.
In fact the director of this film tries very, very hard to put some weight in the story just to please Willis' boredom of the McClane character - this meant giving Willis a sidekick in the shape of Samuel L.Jackson - who plays a badass black guy (as always!) - and they must stop a bored Jeremy Irons with a bad German Accent (if his brother can speak english - why can't he?) - who is trying to do one over the gold deposit in New York (err - isn't this GoldFinger - actually this is referenced when Irons says: "Fort Knox is for tourists!").
The film isn't actually all that bad. It explodes brilliantly with a bombing on a busy NY street - and it makes you sit up and pay attention, but it slowly goes down hill. The interracial jokes and bad cop, good cop idea that Jackson and Willis play is funny at some times, but mostly it is predictable.
Irons doesn't play the character evenly enough. Whereas Gruber almost carries the film in the first, Irons doesn't make a dent...sure Irons has muscles and he screws some random blonde girl - and he can fly a helicopter, but he just isn't sinister or evil enough.
The film, to its credit, has pace, has a fluid pace to it. Its a shame I was disappointed with the film and especially at the end - Willis was supposed to be on the floor - with a chopper hovering over him, he had lost the game - but the way it was directed - it made it felt that Willis STILL had the upper hand - even in the closing minutes when he whispers "Say hi to your brother for me".
The character of McClane is gone. You can see Willis is bored, but is given something to do in the solving of silly puzzles which don't add much to the film, and through the "humorous" conversations with Jackson.
Its no wonder why Willis doesn't want to do more Action films, but having seen this film I can see why.
Lesson Learnt: Hire Die Hard again. My Rating: 5/10.