Product Description
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Disc 1: **"Die Hard" Widescreen Feature with optional Commentary
by director John McTiernan and production designer Jackson
DeGovia **Additional scene-specific commentary by special effects
supervisor Richard Edlund **Subtitled commentary by various cast
and crew **Branching version with the extended power shutdown
scene **DVD-ROM - script-to- screen comparison
Disc 2: **"Die Harder" Widescreen Feature **Directors commentary
Disc 3: **"Die Hard with a Vengeance" Widescreen Feature
**Directors commentary
Disc 4 Bonus Disc: **Inside Look: LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD **Wrong
Guy, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: A Look Back At Die Hard **The
Continuing Adventures of John McClane
.com
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Die Hard is the movie franchise that made a movie star out of TV
star Bruce Willis, and created an entire action-movie genre of
its own. In the original 1988 film, Willis plays wisecracking New
York cop John McClane, who arrives at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los
Angeles to meet up with his estranged wife, Holly (Bonny
Bedelia), at her office Christmas party. As luck would have it,
the company ends up in the middle of a terrorist plot led by Hans
Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang of expert killers, and with
little help coming from outside, McClane has to pick off his
enemies one by one. Thus was born the "Die Hard genre,"
epitomized by such films as Under Siege ("Die Hard on a ship"),
Passenger 57 ("Die Hard on a plane"), Speed ("Die Hard on a
bus"), and Cliffhanger ("Die Hard on a ain"). But few
measure up to the explosive brilliance of Die Hard. Director John
McTiernan develops the action at a fast and furious pace,
culminating in some fantastic set-pieces on the top of the
building, in the elevator shaft, and in the building's outer
plaza. Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza's script, based on
Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever, is smart, funny,
and full of memorable lines (among them "Welcome to the party,
pal!" and of course "Yippee ki-ay, motherf*****"), and the cast
is perfection, especially Rickman as the cunningly evil villain,
and Willis, whose McClane character--bloodied, beaten, d,
and barely breathing, as he battles both bad guys and
bureaucrats--is someone audiences could genuinely cheer for.
Directed by Renny Harlin, the 1990 sequel, Die Hard 2
(unofficially referred to as Die Harder), doesn't match the level
of the original, but it's still an exciting thrill ride with some
terrific action sequences. One year after the Nakatomi incident,
McClane (Willis) is awaiting his wife's (Bedelia) plane to arrive
at Dulles Airport when he stumbles onto a plot to paralyze the
entire airport, including all the planes trying to land. It's up
to McClane to take on the cadre of bad guys despite all the
bureaucrats standing in his way, and before the planes run out of
fuel and c to the ground. The cast includes William Sadler as
rogue man Col. Stuart, Dennis Franz as the latest
bureaucratic cop to get in McClane's way, Richard Thornburg as
the annoying reporter from the original movie, John Amos as a
special-forces commander, early-in-their-career John Leguizamo
and Robert Patrick as terrorists, and future politician and Law
and Order actor Fred Thompson as the head of air traffic control.
The third film in the series, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995),
was again directed by John McTiernan and uses a different
concept. The villain (played by Jeremy Irons) cls to have
ed bombs all over New York City and gives John McClane
(Willis), now alchoholic and separated, a series of clues to try
to track them down. Along the way, he's aided by, and eventually
teams up with, a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L.
Jackson). The interplay between Willis and Jackson is engaging,
but better suited to the Lethal Weapon franchise it was
previously considered for, and not till the end does the movie
return to the familiar McClane-vs.-villains-showdown format.
The 2007 Die Hard Collection is a four-disc set that comes up
short when compared to the previous six-disc Ultimate Collection
, which is now out of print. That 2001 set had two discs for each
film (plus, Die Hard was a Five Star Collection release). This
set does away with all of the second discs, though it retains the
features that were on the movie-only discs, including director
commentaries and the seamlessly branched version of the first
film with a scene added back in. There's also a brand-new fourth
disc, but it's pretty minor. "Wrong Guy, Wrong Place, Wrong Time"
is a 40-minute retrospective of the original movie. Wide-ranging
but rather dull, it collects interviews with director John
McTiernan, cinematographer Jan De Bont, screenwriters Jeb Stuart
and Steven E. De Souza, other crew, and actors Reginald
Veljohnson, Hart Bochner, and William Atherton. Also from 2007,
"The Continuing Adventures of John McClane" looks at the second
and third movies in the series. It's a mere 13 minutes and only
interviews the two directors, Renny Harlin and (in new and old
footage) John McTiernan. Last, three trailers for the 2007 film,
Live Free or Die Hard, make this set look like something that was
released merely to have something on the shelves while the new
film was in theaters. --David Horiuchi