Die Hard With A Vengeance

    365 Films

Entry #74

Die Hard With A Vengeance

Directed by John McTiernan

I can’t pretend that I have a whole page worth of shit to write about Die Hard With A Vengeance so I won’t try to pull some left-field film theory out of my ass to support it.  I will talk about this particularly entry in the Die Hard series as a way of actually avoiding the Die Hard films all together.  This is the only one that will be discussed and it is the only one out of the now five that I ever really might have any desire to watch again.  I am not alone on this, so I will not pretend to be, but I really really fucking hate Bruce Willis.  To get this out of the way, yes, I believe he is a talented performer and he has proven as recently as last year to be an actor who seeks out interesting directors and probably helps secure financing to get those smaller films made.  On the other hand, he rarely uses those powers for good and as of recently any inkling of charm he once possessed has become completely lost on me.  I think it all began a few years ago when he gave some bullshit interview on TV and reverted back to the faux-Jersey tough guy he pretended he once was.  He may or may not have said something that betrayed his political views and while I don’t mean to cast aspersions on those who do not share my particular affiliations (political or otherwise), he sounded like such a dumb shit and for someone paying a small army of publicists and public relations employees, he should know better than that.  Then came the revelations from Kevin Smith as to his behavior on the set of Cop Out where he sounded like an over-paid prima donna who willfully and purposefully went out of his way to make life a living hell for everybody else on the crew.  While that movie was dreadful, I can’t help but think about what the results would have been if its leading man weren’t actively trying to sabotage its success every step of the way (probably still dreadful).  Then I had the distinct displeasure of sitting through FOUR movies of his (by my own volition, I’ll admit) from the past year where I had to watch him glumly and half assedly collect another absurdly high paycheck while making that same stupid Bruce Willis face over and over and over again.  Luckily, the universal failure of the most recent Die Hard film confirmed that there is even some shit out there people will not tolerate.  Then again, his sleep walking through GI Joe probably all but confirmed a green-lit sequel for that pile of shit before the first opening night ticket was even sold.   I guess that’s what really chaps my hide about him the most, he knows how much and how little of him is ever needed for a given performance.  He knows that if all he has to do is sit there, give that smug fucking half smile every 10 seconds, and fire some gargantuan automatic weapon into a bad guy, that’s all that will be required of him for that particular show.  This would be all well and good if he hadn’t proved in the past to have the occasional taste in projects for which he clearly dedicates copious amounts of work and preparation.  If he always followed the instincts that led him to Wes Anderson, Rhian Johnson, and Quentin Tarantino, just think of how many (potentially) amazing Bruce Willis movies we might have! It boggles the mind! And don’t give me that shit about how actors gotta eat, I KNOW he has more than enough money at this point in his life.  So he has decided that he is just another jackass from New Jersey who has earned the right to sit on his ass, horde as much money as he can, make as many bullshit movies as he can, and act like a complete dick whenever he feels like it.  This especially pisses me off because I really liked Die Hard With A Vengeance when I saw it.  I think to this day, it holds up better than any of the other sequels in the series and honestly falls just barely short of the original.  Director John Mc Tiernan’s no bull shit straight ahead (though never artless) camera work and action choreography are sorely missed in today’s over-heated, overly kinetic action market.  I’m sorry if this came off as overly bitter but it’s been on my mind recently and I just had to let it out.  To quote Michael Bolton from Office Space, “it’s not my fault he sucks.”