The film was followed by Live Free or Die Hard in 2007 and A Good Day to Die Hard in 2013.
Plot
The Bonwit Teller department store in New York City is blown up by a bomb during the morning commute. A man identifying himself as "Simon" telephones the New York Police Department (NYPD) and claims responsibility. Making demands in the form of a 'Simon Says' game, he threatens to detonate another bomb unless Police Lieutenant John McClane is sent to Harlem wearing an intentionally provocative sandwich board with a racial slur written on the board. The NYPD comply and send McClane to Harlem, where he is confronted by an electrician and shop owner named Zeus Carver. McClane explains his situation before a group of men also confront McClane over his sign. Carver intervenes and saves McClane, and they escape in a taxi.
They arrive at 1 Police Plaza, where Simon demands that the pair follow a timed challenge or he will set off more bombs. They agree and McClane eventually boards the 3 train heading towards the Wall Street station in order to defuse a bomb that Simon planted on it. Carver arrives at the station before McClane, finds the bomb, and throws it on the tracks just as it explodes. McClane and Carver regroup with the NYPD and meet some FBI and CIA agents, who initially inform the pair that Simon is "Peter Krieg", a mercenary and former colonel in the National People's Army. They then reveal that Krieg's real name is Simon Peter Gruber, the brother of Hans Gruber, whom McClane killed years earlier in Los Angeles.
Simon then places another call to the NYPD, informing them that he has planted an explosive in one of the city's elementary schools which is set to explode once class ends and can be triggered by the same radio frequencies used by law enforcement. Simon offers to give the authorities the school's location if McClane and Carver follow another timed challenge, warning that he will detonate the explosive if any evacuation attempts are carried out. While the pair solve Simon's next challenge, the NYPD begin to search all elementary schools in the city. McClane realizes that Simon is attempting to distract the NYPD away from Wall Street, which has no schools, and travels to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Building. He discovers that Simon's men have stolen $140 billion of gold bullion from its vault using dump trucks. He follows the trucks into the under-construction New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 while Carver continues Simon's challenges.
Simon blows up a cofferdam to flood the tunnel, but McClane escapes and reunites with Carver. Surviving a car chase with Simon's men, the pair find all the men were carrying exactly enough money to pay a bridge toll. The pair sneak aboard a tanker docked in the Long Island Sound, but Simon's associates capture them and tie them up next to a bomb. Simon explains that his school threat was fake and broadcasts a message claiming that he is planning on destroying the tanker filled with the bullion to destabilize the Western world's economy. After he leaves, Carver and McClane free themselves and escape the tanker just before the bomb detonates. As McClane and Carver are debriefed by the NYPD, McClane informs them that none of the bullion Simon's men stole was in the tanker's cargo hold, having deduced that Simon had intended to keep all of it for himself, using his knowledge of the Gruber family's modus operandi.
While attempting to place a call to his estranged wife Holly, McClane glances at a bottle of aspirin given to him by Simon on board the tanker and notices that it was purchased at a truck stop in Quebec on the Canada–United States border. McClane informs the NYPD of his discovery, and joins them and Carver as they rush towards a warehouse near the truck stop where Simon and his men are redistributing the bullion and planning their escape. The rest of Simon's men are quickly apprehended by law enforcement personnel, though Simon and his girlfriend Katya attempt to escape in a helicopter, attacking McClane. McClane shoots at an overhead power line which falls onto the helicopter, causing it to crash and explode, killing Simon and Katya. While they are celebrating their triumph, Carver persuades McClane to place another call to Holly.
Cast
Production
Development and writing
Like most of the films in the series, the premise of this film was repurposed from a stand-alone project. Various scripts were written for Die Hard 3; a number of them were ultimately rejected by Bruce Willis on the grounds that they felt like retreads of the action movies that came in the wake of the first film. One script, originally titled Troubleshooter, had McClane fighting terrorists on a Caribbean cruise line, but was rejected for being too similar to Under Siege. Troubleshooter was later repurposed for Speed 2: Cruise Control. The lawsuit was settled before going to trial, with Fishburne receiving $750,000 and a guarantee that Cinergi would option a screenplay he had written.
Editing
McTiernan later revealed his planned original ending, which was not filmed:
Music
Michael Kamen returned to score the third film, again incorporating other material into his score (most notably "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", not included on the soundtrack album). Excerpts from his scores for Die Hard and Die Hard 2 were also included in the new film. The soundtrack was released by RCA Victor. In 2012, La-La Land Records released an expanded version of the soundtrack, containing music that Kamen had composed but went unused in the final film.
Release
Theatrical
Unlike its predecessors, Die Hard with a Vengeance did not take place during Christmas, but instead being set during the late summer. It opened in theaters on May 19, 1995, five years after Die Hard 2. Despite concerns about the film portraying bomb threats and terrorism with the Oklahoma City bombing having occurred the previous month, the film was released as originally scheduled.
Home media
Die Hard with a Vengeance was released on VHS on December 19, 1995, in the United States by Fox Video with a THX-certified version, while it was released in international countries by Touchstone Home Entertainment and released in South Africa on VHS by Ster-Kinekor Home Video. It was then released on LaserDisc on January 17, 1996, and on DVD on March 9, 1999. A special edition was released on DVD on July 10, 2001, and then re-released in February 2005 and 2007. The film was released on Blu-ray in 2007 and 2013. A 4K release of the film has been made available for digital purchase on services such Apple TV, Amazon Video, and the Microsoft Store, plus free 4K streaming on select platforms such as Disney+.
Alternative ending
An alternative ending to the one shown in the final movie was filmed with Jeremy Irons and Bruce Willis, set some time after the events in New York. It 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; it is also mentioned that McClane and his wife Holly have divorced. Nevertheless, he still manages to track Simon using the batch number on the bottle of aspirins and they meet in a bar in Hungary. In this version, Simon has double-crossed most of his accomplices, gotten the loot to a safe hiding place somewhere in Hungary, and has the gold turned into statuettes of the Empire State Building in order to smuggle it out of the country. 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 that has had the sights removed, meaning it is impossible to determine 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. The studio was also displeased with the lack of action in the scene, feeling that it did not fit as a "climax" and therefore chose to reshoot the finale as an action sequence at a significant monetary cost. Hensleigh's intention was to show that the events in New York and the subsequent repercussions had tilted McClane psychologically. This alternative ending, set some time after the film's main events, would have marked a serious break from the Die Hard formula, in which the plot unfolds over a period of roughly 12 hours. The film ranked number one at the box office, beating Crimson Tide. The film went on to gross $100,012,499 in the United States and Canada, and $266,089,167 in other<!-- Using the word "foreign" in this case is like saying the USA is the only country in the world. --> markets, giving it a total worldwide gross of $366,101,666 and making it the highest-grossing film of 1995.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 60% based on 80 reviews, with an average rating of 6.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Die Hard with a Vengeance gets off to a fast start and benefits from Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson's barbed interplay, but clatters to a bombastic finish in a vain effort to cover for an overall lack of fresh ideas." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 58 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, praising the action sequences and the performances of Willis, Jackson, and Irons, concluding: "Die Hard with a Vengeance is basically a wind-up action toy, cleverly made, and delivered with high energy. It delivers just what it advertises, with a vengeance." Entertainment Weeklys Owen Gleiberman disliked the film, stating that while "[[John McTiernan|[John] McTiernan]] stages individual sequences with great finesse... they don't add up to a taut, dread-ridden whole".
James Berardinelli thought that the explosions and fights were "filmed with consummate skill, and are thrilling in their own right". Samuel L. Jackson's performance in the film was also praised by critics. Desson Howe of The Washington Post thought that "the best thing about the movie is the relationship between McClane and Zeus," saying that Jackson was "almost as good as he was in Pulp Fiction." For Variety, Brian Lowry wrote the film was the "least accomplished" of the Die Hard series, but "even a subpar adventure won't kill this series, as the pic's built-in audience will make it a major summer attraction, if perhaps one lacking quite the stamina of the first two movies".
Empire magazine's Ian Nathan gave the film a three out of five stars review, stating that "Die Hard with a Vengeance is better than Die Hard 2, but not as good as the peerless original. Though it's breathless fun, the film runs out of steam in the last act. And Jeremy Irons' villain isn't fit to tie Alan Rickman's shoelaces."
In the Crime Time Filmbook, which archives various UK film reviews, the film was given a perfect 5-star review, citing it as "...simply the best Action film of the decade, leaving imitators like Bad Boys, Executive Decision, The Rock and Chain Reaction in varying depths of shadow.
Retrospective rankings have called the film the best sequel in the franchise. Empire considered it to be one of the 50 greatest film sequels in 2009. Ben Sherlock of Screen Rant regarded it as the best sequel of the franchise. Johnny Hoffman from MovieWeb considered it a step up from the previous film and praised Willis and Jackson's chemistry and the action scenes.