Die Hard with a Vengeance

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Die Hard: With a Vengeance is a 1995 action film, and the second sequel in the Die Hard series. It was produced and directed by John McTiernan (who directed the first film) and stars Bruce Willis as NYPD detective John McClane. Vengeance introduces Samuel L. Jackson as Willis' reluctant partner, Zeus Carver and Jeremy Irons as the main villain, Simon Gruber. The film was written by Jonathan Hensleigh, and was followed by Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.

Plot

The antagonist in this movie is Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), brother of Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, who, like Irons, was an English actor playing a German). Hans was a German criminal who was killed by NYPD cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Los Angeles at the climax of Die Hard, the first film in the series. It first appears as though Simon is out to avenge his brother's death, but it is later revealed that other motives are at work.

He begins by blowing up a bomb in a department store and telling Inspector Walter Cobb, using his (real) first name Simon, that McClane must walk through Harlem displaying a sandwich board reading "I hate niggers", or expect 'another big bang in a very public place'. When some offended African Americans threaten him, they are held back at gunpoint by racially prejudiced shopkeeper Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson). Carver gets McClane away, not out of concern for a white man, but that the colleagues of a white cop might go gunning for every black person in the area if one of their own is killed; "One white cop dies in Harlem, tomorrow we got a thousand white cops, all of 'em with itchy trigger fingers." Back at the police station, Simon calls and insists that this "Good Samaritan" has become part of the game whether he likes it or not.

Simon has planted real as well as phony bombs throughout the city, and forces McClane and Carver to participate in a game of "Simon says", which usually consists of giving them information about a bomb and giving them a chance to defuse them.

The first game happens at a public telephone. Simon calls and reads them the As I Was Going to St Ives riddle. To answer the riddle, McClane needs to dial 555 followed by the answer within 30 seconds. They make the call, but are 10 seconds late. Simon laughs and says there is no bomb, since he "didn't say 'Simon Says'."

McClane is told they have half an hour to go to a phone at the New York City Subway station Wall Street Station from where they are on the upper west side. To do this, McClane commandeers a taxi and drives through Central Park, and makes a radio call for an ambulance which they follow through heavy traffic. McClane later manages to climb into the subway train from a grating and finds the bomb, quickly chucking it out the train window. Only Zeus makes it to the station to pick up the call. Simon says that McClane's absence is a breach of the rules and the bomb is detonated, however he had intended for the bomb to detonate regardless, since an activation switch was placed on the subway tracks to detonate the bomb once the subway car hit the switch. Only the audience is aware of the fact at this time.

After the bomb is detonated, they must go to another park to answer another riddle. This time, Simon says "What has four legs and is always ready to travel?" Zeus figures out that it is an elephant, and they find a briefcase bomb in an elephant fountain in the park. After a short argument on whether to open the briefcase, John decides to open it. When he does, an LCD screen reads "I am a bomb. You have just armed me." Simon then calls them again, telling them that they must use a 5 gallon and a 3 gallon jug to put exactly 4 gallons of water on the bomb's scale to disarm it, which they do in the nick of time.

When Simon next calls, he states that there is a bomb within one of the schools in New York. They must not evacuate schools, but the police start a massive search for the bomb. Simon's next riddle is "What is 21 out of 42?", and Zeus figures out that there have been 42 Presidents of the United States but is unable to remember who the 21st was. Later, a truck driver tells McClane he was Chester A. Arthur, and it identifies a school in which Simon claims to have placed a bomb — it is later found to be Chester A. Arthur Elementary School, the very school where Zeus' two nephews happen to be attending.

As Zeus and McClane are traveling between destinations, McClane catches and reprimands a boy for stealing a candy bar in plain sight. The boy comments that every cop in the city is "into something" and one could, as the boy puts it, "steal City Hall". McClane abruptly realizes the nature of Simon's plan.

So far the police have been led to believe that all this is an overblown act of revenge. However, it is really a diversion from Simon's real goal: to rob the high-security vault in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which holds the gold reserves of many nations, even more than Fort Knox. The need to search the thousands of schools in New York, none of which are located in the financial district, means that the police, emergency and Federal agencies are all occupied elsewhere. This enables Simon and his army of East European mercenaries to break into the vault and make their escape with a dozen dump trucks filled to the brim with gold bars.

McClane later goes inside the bank building, and sees one of Simon's henchmen disgused as a bank security cop. As the two converse, the terrorist, presumably schooled in British English, slips up and calls the elevator a lift and shows his ignorance in idioms by getting the phrase "Raining cats and dogs" the wrong way round, instead saying "Dogs and cats". It is from this point McClane gets suspicious believing that he is working for Simon.

Amongst the phoney security guard are two other of Simon's henchmen. One of these is wearing a badge in disguise as a detective, and McClane sees the number of the badge in a reflection of the lift recognising who is originally belonged to, as earlier on in the film the same person after the subway explosion, killed the original owner of the badge, and used it himself. Before the lift stops, McClane shoots all three of them and some of the blood ends up on him, with Carver thinking for a moment he's been seriously shot, with McClane telling him it's not his blood.

After McClane and Carver see through the plan, they catch up with the gang as they embark their trucks on board a ship. They are captured and left on the ship with a huge bomb. When McClane first sees this bomb, he realizes that there is no bomb in the school - the bomb that police found is an elaborate dummy filled with pancake syrup. Simon and McClane finally meet face to face. Simon advises McClane that "some gentlemen in the Middle East seem to think they'll make a lot of money" when a substantial portion of the world's gold reserves are destroyed. Carver asks what this has to do with killing McClane to which Simon replies, "Life has its little bonuses." The two men are left handcuffed to each other sitting astride the bomb.

At this point they hold a heart-to-heart, with McClane admitting that he and his wife are yet again estranged, and Carver trying to convince him to try to at least call her. They both manage to get off the ship just as the bomb explodes, destroying the ship.

Simon has (via a taped message transmitted over the ship's radio) led the authorities to believe that the gold was still aboard the ship and that the whole affair was a plot to upset the world economy. However, McClane surmises that it is yet another diversion and that the gold is safe elsewhere, based on experience with Simon's brother, Hans. After suffering a horrible headache all day, McClane had finally managed to obtain a bottle of aspirin from Simon himself. Based on Carver's prompting, McClane then calls his estranged wife. As the call is connecting, McClane goes to take one of the pills, and a label on the bottom of the bottle shows that they were purchased from a pharmacy in Quebec, Canada. McClane is forced to leave the phone to pursue Simon, and leaves his wife hanging on the line. This leads the action to a warehouse in Canada where Simon and his gang have indeed taken the gold. There they witness Simon's gang being caught by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police before being attacked by Simon in a helicopter. The final battle ensues and as the helicopter hovers underneath some power lines, McClane cleverly shoots out the power lines with two shots from the chamber (which McClane put 2 bullets in the chamber, putting the remaining of the bullets aside.), destroying the helicopter, and sending Simon with his partner on board to join his late brother, before saying "Yipee-ki-ay motherfucker".

As the film ends, McClane calls his wife on a nearby pay phone, despite worrying about the fact that he left her on hold. The credits roll as the call is connecting.

Cast

Actor	Role
Bruce Willis	John McClane
Jeremy Irons	Simon Gruber
Samuel L. Jackson	Zeus Carver
Larry Bryggman	Inspector Walter Cobb
Graham Greene	Officer Joe Lambert
Colleen Camp	Officer Connie Kowalski
Sharon Washington	Officer Jane
Anthony Peck	Officer Ricky Walsh
Michael Alexander Jackson	Dexter
Aldis Hodge	Raymond
Nicholas Wyman	Mathias Targo
Sam Phillips	Katya
Aasif Mandvi	Arab cabbie
Elvis Duran	Radio DJ
John McTiernan, Sr.	Fisherman

Script & setting

This movie is based on a script written by Jonathan Hensleigh originally titled Simon Says, which was originally conceived as a Brandon Lee action film, then later considered for use as the fourth installment of the Lethal Weapon series. The first half of Die Hard with a Vengeance is almost identical to Simon Says; the robbery was added to bring the story in line with other Die Hard films. The original plan was to have the villains burgle the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an idea not used here, but which appears in John McTiernan's film The Thomas Crown Affair and also the video game Die Hard: Vendetta. An episode of The Batman had a very similar plot, where The Riddler planted fake bombs around Gotham City while stealing the codes to all of the city's networks.

Original ending

An alternative ending to the one shown in the final film was made and can be found on the special edition DVD. In this version it is presumed that the robbery succeeds, and that McClane was used as the scapegoat for everything that went wrong. He is fired from the NYPD after more than 20 years on the force and the FBI has even taken away his pension.

In this version the crook has dumped or double-crossed most of his accomplices, gotten the loot to a safe hiding place (Nova Scotia), and has the gold turned into statuettes of a famous landmark (in this case the Empire State Building) in order to smuggle it out of the country; but he is still tracked down to his foreign hideaway. This is very similar to Alec Guinness' situation in the British heist movie The Lavender Hill Mob made some 45 years earlier in which the stolen gold is turned into Eiffel Tower paperweights.

McClane is keen to take his problems out on Simon whom he invites to play a game called "McClane Says". This involves a form of Russian Roulette with a small Chinese rocket launcher with the sights removed, meaning it cannot be determined which end is which. McClane then asks Simon some riddles similar to the ones he played in New York. When Simon gets a riddle wrong, McClane forces him at gunpoint to fire the launcher, which fires the rocket through Simon, killing him.

In the DVD audio commentary, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh claims that this version was dropped because the studio thought it showed a more cruel and menacing side to McClane, a man who killed for revenge rather than in self-defense. Hensleigh's intention was to show that the events in New York and the subsequent repercussions had tilted him psychologically. This alternative ending, set some time after the main events of the movie, would have marked a serious break from the Die Hard formula, in which the plot unfolds over a period of roughly 24 hours.

According to the DVD audio commentary, a second alternate ending had McClane and Carver floating back to shore on a makeshift raft after the explosion at sea. Carver says it's a shame the bad guys are going to get away; McClane tells him not to be so sure. The scene then shifts to the plane where the terrorists find the briefcase bomb they left in the park and which Carver gave back to them (in this version it was not used to blow up the dam). The movie would end on a darkly comic note as Simon asks if anyone has a 4 gallon jug. This draft of the script was rejected early on, and unlike the rocket-launcher sequence, was never actually filmed.

Box office

Die Hard With a Vengeance had a budget of an estimated $90,000,000. It had a wide release opening in 2,525 theaters, making $22,162,245 its opening weekend in the U.S. Die Hard With a Vengeance made $100,012,499 in the USA, and another $261,200,000 worldwide. With a gross revenue of $361,212,499 this gives the film approximately $271,212,499 in profit, not counting rentals, home video, merchandising, and other sources of revenue.

Production notes

On the DVD commentary, screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh says the idea for the film's plot came to him when he imagined what would happen if one of his childhood friends, who was injured after Hensleigh threw a rock at him, decided to seek revenge on him as an adult.

The protagonist in Hensleigh's original Simon Says script was a New York cop named Alex Bradshaw, and the character that became Zeus Carver was a woman. The film studio wanted Hensleigh to change Zeus's race from black to either white or Asian.

The scene where John McClane (Willis) wears the sandwich board that says "I Hate Niggers" was filmed in Washington Heights in order to avoid any conflict/riot in Harlem. The street signs along Audubon Avenue between 173rd and 177th Streets, along with several store awnings and signs, were replaced to replicate Harlem. Additionally, the sandwich board that Willis wore originally read "I hate everybody". The slogan was digitally altered during post-production.

In the director commentary, director McTiernan states that future Vice President Dick Cheney makes an uncredited cameo in the film.

Much of the film was shot around Charleston, South Carolina, including the subway scenes (which were shot on a set) and the bridge scenes (which were shot on the John P. Grace Memorial Bridge).

Hensleigh and the production were questioned by the FBI due to the accuracy of the robbery details found in the script. Since the production had used actual blue prints in formulating the robbery to ensure its accuracy, apparently it was too accurate as such a plan could actually work.

The chase scenes in the tunnel were filmed in New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, a then-unfinished tunnel connecting the city to reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

While the highway scenes are supposed to take place on the Saw Mill Parkway in Westchester County, New York, they were actually filmed on the Merritt Parkway in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and on the Taconic Parkway in Putnam County, New York.

Character "Dr. Fred Schiller" is a reference to the 18th century German poet Friedrich Schiller, who wrote the lyrics used by Ludwig van Beethoven in his 9th symphony, which is used in Die Hard (1988).

During its pay-per-view run in 1996, a bonus featurette followed the presentation of the movie which included footage of some scenes with additional dialogue such as the scene in the Federal Reserve Bank where Felix Little asks "You're in the flower business, Mr. Vanderflug?" and added is Simon replying "It's Vanderfluge, it rhymes with tulip." explaining why Felix pronounces the name correctly from that point on. This featurette is not included in the Special Edition DVD.

The park on top of the Wall Street station in the film was a vacant lot that was made into a park for the film. It was turned back into a vacant lot after filming was completed.

Laurence Fishburne was the original choice to play Zeus Carver, but turned down the part. When he reconsidered the decision, Samuel L. Jackson was already cast.

Samuel L. Jackson's look in the film was Jackson's idea after he'd done extensive research on his character by studying books on Malcolm X.

As in the first Die Hard, the German spoken in this movie is mostly grammatically incorrect. A few lines are so wrong that they have to be considered gibberish (most notably the exchange of the fake cops, who are given the briefcase bomb by Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson). In the scene in Yankee Stadium, the subtitled lines do not match what is actually being said. In the German release, however, all of the lines that were German in the original movie are grammatically correct, fitting the context and some of the terrorists even have an East German accent.

The producers planned to blow up the Hutchinson River Parkway tollbooth structure for a scene in the movie. The tolls were to be eliminated anyway, and then-Governor Mario Cuomo volunteered to push the switch. But opposition from local residents in close proximity and from other officials killed the idea.

In the scene where the police are informed of the school bomb, one of the police officials is played by Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's (who went uncredited for this participation).

The taxi (No. 2T94) that is driven by Samuel L. Jackson is the same one that Jack Nicholson hails to take Helen Hunt and her child to the hospital in As Good as It Gets (1997).

McClane (Bruce Willis) tells Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) "I was livin' on a nice fat suspension, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo." The second line is from the song "Flowers on the Wall" by The Statler Brothers from the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction (1994), starring both Willis and Jackson. Willis's character (Butch) sang the song in Fabienne's car when he spotted Marsellus Wallace.

Sean Connery was John McTiernan's very first choice for the role of Simon Gruber. He turned down the role, saying that he didn't want to play such a diabolical villain.

The FBI agents in the movie say that Simon Gruber was a colonel in the East German Army.

Gruber's scheme in the final film bears a resemblance to the scheme from the James Bond film Goldfinger, in that in both films the villain plans an elaborate break-in to a gold depository with the stated intention of destroying the supply to cripple the American economy. The main difference in Die Hard With a Vengeance is that Gruber switches out the real gold for lead and actually steals it before getting caught at the Canadian border. Goldfinger planned to actually steal the Fort Knox gold in Ian Fleming's original novel.

References

Worldwide DVD Forums

External links

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Last updated on Monday March 03, 2008 at 14:01:13 PST (GMT -0800)
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