Die Hard with a Vengeance Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you like classic French movies like I like classic French movies -- and get a kick out of modern-day interpretations of same -- then check out the clips below. (Go ahead, I'll wait.) In their original incarnations, neither Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile nor John McTiernan's Die Hard: With a Vengeance scream out "50s!!! 60s!!!" or "France!!!," but, nonetheless, they're the type of clips, courtesy of Buzzfeed, that set the imagination soaring,

Fair warning: the fairly lengthy clips (almost four minutes each) are part of a viral campaign for Stella Artois beer. The marketing message is kept to a minimum. With 8 Kilometres, it's the idea of a rap battle taking place in a beatnik bar between two hepcats with a cool jazz band in the background, filmed in black and white. Instead of a heated war of words, it's more like a rather cordial exchange of philosophies. The lead actor is no Eminem, but who is?

Dial Hard moves the action to a colorful coastal city in 1963, with a perky tune playing in the background. Instead of Bruce Willis as McClane and Jeremy Irons as the evil bomber Simon, we get "Inspector Jean Meglain" playing a game of cat and mouse via telephone with "Simone." In this version, Inspector Meglain has a different set of priorities

After the jump: Dial Hard.

Reviews for 3:10 to Yuma offer a lot of talk about the revivification of a dead genre. Stephen Hunter, the Washington Post critic (whose novel turned movie Shooter shows he knows a little about guns) comments that the success of the Russell Crowe/Christian Bale western will mean "there will be more westerns, and we old goats can die happy, with our boots on, our guns holstered, and the sun at our back, humming Ricky Nelson's 'My Rifle, My Pony and Me' as we go to Jesus." A slightly obscure sentence to those under 50, but I'll be clarifying this line in a minute.

I agree with Hunter that more westerns is a good thing, and if someone can make them without the elements with which James Mangold swamped his hit -- the ornamenting of a simple story with Iraq malaise, irresolute everybody-wins endings, and other add-ons -- so much the better. Stuff that mostly just expanded the running time and sold the story to people who prefer action/adventure films to westerns.

Some critics are claiming that Mangold has added complex morality to a genre that's mostly good guys v. bad guys. Such critics really need another look at My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, or better yet Howard Hawks' serio-comic western Rio Bravo. Here, a group of unsteady deputies, one of them one-legged, led by a slightly nervous sheriff, tough out the same situation as in 3:10 to Yuma: an army of mercenaries encircling a town where a jailed captive waits for his transfer to prison. That Hawks saw the comedy in the situation is no surprise. The director of His Girl Friday and Bringing Up Baby needed no schooling in the craft of comedy. And just as his The Big Sleep is the ultimate guide to how to be a private detective, he was able to make John Wayne's John T. Chance a light comic figure, even when facing possibility of certain death.

Just in time for the new Die Hard sequel, Live Free or Die Hard (or, as its called in the UK and elsewhere, Die Hard 4.0), my favorite film cynic, Guardian Unlimited columnist Joe Queenan, has given us a review of the first three movies. Rather than recap the actual plots of Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Die Hard: With a Vengeance, though, Queenan focuses on reminding us of the deaths and damages of the franchise, most of which he claims would have gotten Bruce Willis's character in a lot of trouble, or at least mixed up in a lot of red tape. Of course, this is has been a joke about action movies for over twenty years now; plenty of parodies have knocked the fact that heroes cause more destruction than should be necessary. But Queenan points out one serious issue with the second Die Hard film that I had forgotten. Willis' John McClane pretty much causes the deaths of more than 230 innocent people, including passengers of a crashed jet plane, which is downed by a terrorist who doesn't like McClane's taunting.

As usual, Queenan is taking the movies too seriously (though I'm sure he doesn't really; its just for the story). The fact that McClane is an everybody who saves the day and faces no consequences is part of the fantasy of action films of the era. Critics have pondered the genre as everything from male empowerment following women's rights to individual empowerment following the failure of Vietnam and/or amidst an age of global threats, be they communist or terrorist. But basically action movies, and the Die Hard movies especially, are an all-of-the-above fantasy about what we'd all hope to be able to do if placed in the worst possible situation. Sure, they give a promise of implausible and impossible solutions, but I don't think many people have tried to single-handedly defeat hijackers or other bad guys because of what has been seen in the movies (I guess you could suggest the passengers on United 93, but that would be an honorable exception).

It's been a good twelve years since Bruce Willis last took on the role of John McClane, the sharp-mouthed hero who always seems to stumble into trouble. Now we're only 8 days away from the next installment, Live Free or Die Hard. Of course, re-visiting a really popular action hero opens the door for all sorts of tie-in merchandise. For the Die Hard series, it's a new box set, rolling in just in time for a pre-Free, Die Hard marathon. However, there was already a big, super-packed Ultimate Collection from 2001, so is the Die Hard Collection, which is arriving in stores tomorrow, worth it?

Of course, the first disc is John McTiernan's original Die Hard from 1988. When John McClane's estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and co-workers are held hostage, he becomes a one-man army determined to foil the evil schemes of Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber – with a little walkie-talkie motivation from Reginald VelJohnson, of course. The extra features for the DVD are not new. There is the extended feature that shows a longer power shut-down scene, the commentary with McTiernan and production designer Jackson DeGovia, the scene-specific commentary by special effects supervisor Richard Edlund and the subtitle commentary, which can be played with any of the commentaries or the regular movie itself.

I recently had myself a fun little Die Hard marathon and came out the other side realizing that, hey, all three of these movies pretty much rock. OK, sure, the plot of Part 2 borders on moronic, and the third act of Part 3 is a crystalline example of seriously confused filmmaking, but all three flicks have Bruce Willis doing what he does best: Avoiding and dispatching deadly terrorists while doling out Normal Joe quips at a rapid pace. Plus the whole trilogy is rife with great character actors, rousing musical scores, and more high-end action that you can shake a Joel Silver at.

So what are my thoughts regarding the slooooow evolution of a Die Hard 4? Simple: If Harry Ford's not too old to don the Indy fedora one more time, then I say it's OK for John McClane to pull his bloody wife-beater out of mothballs and kill a few new terrorists. Fox apparently agrees with me, and the latest news is that Underworld / Underworld: Evolution director / amazingly lucky Kate Beckinsale toe-curler Len Wiseman has been offered the Die Hard 4 gig.

So while the jury is still out on whether Mr. Wiseman can direct an action scene that involves, y'know, sunlight, I think this might be a move in the right direction. Plus if he can get the missus to play the sexily evil henchwoman of the inevitably British villain, all the better. The Die Hard 4 screenplay, which deals with John McClane aborting his retirement to take down an internet terrorist ring, was written by Mark Bomback (Godsend) and Doug Richardson (Money Train), so there's that to worry about. (To be fair, Richardson co-wrote Die Hard 2, so that bodes well -- if you happen to like Die Hard 2, that is.)