Mediocre at best

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2000)

If all you care about is watching action scenes, then "Die Hard: With A Vengeance" should earn a passing grade from you. Perhaps that is all one should care about when watching a film of this genre, but I find myself looking for other qualities in a movie -- fine acting, superior script, witty jokes, originality, etc. -- to make the two hours of its viewing more enjoyable. In my opinion, these sorts of qualities are absent here.
Willis and Jackson are decent but are far better in other movies, such as "The Sixth Sense" (Willis) or "Pulp Fiction" (Jackson). The script is barely above the made-for-TV level, if at all. The jokes, for the most part, lack wit and thoughtfulness, and the slapstick humor is not that funny either. It has the same old black vs. white cliches and jokes, a couple of which are slightly offensive. For example, the "n" word is used several times in this movie. That would be acceptable if the movie were a serious look at racism, such as "Mississippi Burning", but it is rather grating in a movie intended to be lighthearted and entertaining.
And I know, the viewer is expected to engage in suspension of disbelief when watching films like this one, but when just about everything that happens is totally ludicrous, it becomes distracting. First of all, are we really expected to believe that Samuel Jackson's character would just drop what he is doing and go risk his life? That's a rather abrupt change of attitude for a character originally introduced to the audience as a small shop-owner and devoted family man. And how about the fact that the entire NYPD is duped into believing that a group of very Aryan-looking men with blatantly German accents whom no one recognizes are cops. Come on.
If you are on an airplane and have nothing to read, and they are showing "Die Hard: With a Vengeance", go ahead and watch it. If you are cozy at home flipping the channels and this happens to be on, then what the heck. There are certainly worse movies. But for the most part, this film is weak. Though there is plenty of action, it is close to devoid of anything else that makes a movie great. One bright spot: Jeremy Irons' portrayal of the villain. He is a talent.