Over 2 hours long, Die Hard with a Vengeance is an overlong, bloated flick that makes the mistake of functioning as a thriller than an out and out action fest made synonymous with fans of Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder.
When a terrorist who calls himself Simon threatens to blow up parts of New York City, he demands John McClane to follow his orders and to do as 'Simon says, or else; McClane then joins forces with an angry shopkeeper by the name of Zeus and the pair try to outwit Simon.
It's okay for the most part but lacks the atmosphere, engagement and capacity of the first two instalments in the series and the slow and erratic pacing really took me out of the plot; Die Hard With a Vengeance is too convoluted for its own good.
Lethal Weapon IV was a lacklustre sequel and arguably the weakest in the series - alas, the script in with A Vengeance, had it been originally retooled with Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh in mind as an abandoned Lethal Weapon affair, instead of John McClaine and Zeus for a somewhat makeshift Die Hard (which this was), would have suited Lethal Weapon IV far better & more so than Die Hard with A Vengeance. Vengeance tries to build on the buddy rapport between McClane and Zeus in the way that the first Lethal Weapon did with Riggs and Murtaugh -yet both Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson (who were previously seen in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction a year before) don't seem to click in the same way as the onscreen Lethal Weapon pairing of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover during the first 2 films of the series.
The tension takes a long while to build up, but even that is sort of sterile; a lot of people prefer this instalment over Die Hard 2; I do like the fact that the scale of the action is not whittled down to just one setting, be it at an airport or building, and that John and Zeus get to roam the streets of New York, zigging and zagging around all the chaos that takes place in the Big Apple. Villain Simon, played by Brit actor, Jeremy Irons, is a riff of his now-deceased brother of the first film, Hans, yet it and he isn't as fun and charming.
The part where Holly, John's wife is written out of the film, and with John separated from her, was something I didn't realise until I watched this, and yet when it sunk in, I never cared much for this storyline.
But for a couple of explosions, the film degenerates into a set of chases and a heist - something that is usually unknownst in Die Hard - and signs of fatigue start to creep into the series, beginning with this film.
Final Verdict:
After Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Bruce Willis did state he would never do another Die Hard movie... but then came along three more films - the first film was the benchmark that others tried to follow, with arguably Die Harder only managing this feat in my view - even if Willis himself disliked that sequel. Vengeance isn't so much a completely needless sequel - it is that it is so un-Die Hard like, it never truly works to Bruce Willis' John McClane's advantage.
What one would have wished as the formula for Lethal Weapon IV, however, sigh...
Overall:
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