Binge Movie Aftertaste – Die Hard Retrospective w/ Ammon and Batch Pt 3: Die Hard With A Vengeance
By the time 1995 rolled around, the action genre was still seeing all the remnants of Die Hard’s success take shape in the form of its imitators. Die Hard on a ship. Die Hard on a bus. The movie going public was so inundated with imitations, that the prospect of John McClane returning for another adventure were looking to be dwindling away due to Hollywood’s common ability to over saturate the market with too much of a good thing.
But extrenuating circumstances forced two major players in the franchise to flex their action movie making muscles once again. First, Bruce Willis was in the position of sorely needing a hit. After taking control of what was reportedly a fantastic script in Hudson Hawk, Willis’s ego brought the production to its knees, as he had them do his bidding. Much to the film’s dismay. And the 1993 action yarn Striking Distance wasn’t doing too much fire burning at the box office either.
John McTiernan was also coming off a career slump, as the Arnold Schwarzenegger flop Last Action Hero was still on the tips of tongues of Hollywood executives learning that too much of a good thing, in action’s most successful star and the innovative director that put adventure filmmaking on the Hollywood map, was anything but. The re-teamup of these two in a sequel to their most successful film was all but inevitable. And we at the Aftertaste are here to watch it.
Once again join Batch, Ammon, and myself as we look at 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, and decide whether the film seemingly made out of career salvaging desperation was either a good or bad result in our eyes.
Note: Due to our schedules being all over the place this week, there will not be an Aftertaste next Thursday. However, in two weeks, we will return with not one, but TWO reviews. One of Live Free or Die Hard, and the other being A Good Day to Die Hard. Also, keep an eye on this space as lots of surprises are coming down the pike.
Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995) (?/10, ?/10, ?/10)
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