An unlucky day...threepeat

Rating: 9/10 (11 April 2018)

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.