Die Hard 3 (3 Stars)

This film was called "Die Hard with a Vengeance" in most countries, but I prefer to call it "Die Hard 3". It makes things easier for my alphabetical list of posts.

I disliked this film from the first minutes. It doesn't keep to the concept of the first two films, in which John McClane was a policeman outside of his jurisdiction acting without the support of the other police.

John is now living in New York, although he was working in Los Angeles in the second film. He began his career as a New York Cop, then he moved to Los Angeles to join his wife, and now he's back in New York. He's split up with his wife, which is maybe the reason for his move. He's also been suspended from the police force because of his drinking. He's introduced as an alcoholic, which also disturbs me. Okay, people can change. But the biggest problem I have with the film is his relationship to the police. A bomb goes off in a department store, and a caller tells the police that he'll set off another bomb unless John McClane goes to Harlem, wearing a sandwich board with a racial slur. And the police actually send McClane. They give him back his badge and send him into action. Ridiculous!

John McClane is almost killed by a black gang that doesn't like what he's saying. I won't repeat the words, but it's nasty. His life is only saved by a corner shop owner, Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Zeus has a jovial personality, but he isn't a pleasant man. He's a racist who tells his children not to take any help from white men. He only helps McClane because he's told that the next bomb might go off in Harlem.

A cat and mouse game follows. The mystery caller, who's later exposed as the brother of Hans Gruber from the first film, sends him round New York on impossible tasks, running against the clock to prevent bombs going off. The caller insists on Zeus going with him, which I also find strange. He wants revenge on McClane, so a random man from Harlem only gets in the way. It's an artificial construction by the screenwriter to put a black man into a main role.

There's a lot of action. It's not car chases, it's just a fast car racing from A to B. The fans liked the film, but the critics didn't. It was the most successful film of 1995 at the box office. This is one of the rare occasions where I side with the critics. The film's action sequences aren't enough to compensate for a poor story.

Success Rate:  + 2.1

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