Secretly Great Movies: Die Hard With a Vengeance.

The story you know: 

After a five year hiatus, Bruce Willis reprised his role as embattled NYPD cop John McClane, rejoining original director John McTiernan. With Samuel L. Jackson along for the ride, McClane becomes caught up in a sadistic game of "Simon Says" as the duo pinball across New York defusing bombs and trying to catch the bad guys. The film got mixed reviews, with even the positive ones being typically patronizing: Roger Ebert, giving the movie three stars, described it as a wind-up toy.

The shocking truth:

Die Hard With a Vengeance is actually the best Die Hard movie.

From the standpoint of auteur theory, it's the only true sequel. The lackluster second installment (which most people only remember for the part where McClane talks about the Glock 7, a fictional gun made out of porcelain which can bypass airport metal detectors) was directed by Renny Harlin, the mastermind behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (a huge letdown after the awesome Dream Warriors) and the epic pirate flop Cutthroat Island. The fun but regrettably neutered Live Free or Die Hard was directed by the guy behind the Underworld series, i.e. those tedious vampire movies you never bothered to see. McTiernan, meanwhile, directed Die Hard and Predator, two achievements that eclipse any latter-day sins you might care to charge him with, including lying to the FBI.

But better than the original? Go back watch McTiernan's 1988 action masterpiece, the greatness of which I am not disputing, and notice how the film's otherwise faultless marathon of walking over broken glass and killing terrorists screeches to a halt whenever the characters of Sgt. Powell and Argyle, McClane's hapless sidekicks, enter the frame. This is during the height of Reginald Vel Johnson's career of playing likable supporting cops, but he's just not really up to the task here; the maudlin sequence where he outlines his tragic fall from grace due to an accidental shooting is time that could be much better spent cracking wise and dispatching smarmy eurotrash terrorists. (De'voreaux White, who played the totally superfluous limo driver Argyle, was more or less never heard from again.)

"I can rebuild him. I have the technology."

With a Vengeance, based on a non-Die Hard script called "Simon Says", rectifies these mistakes by introducing the most memorable character in the entire series: Zeus Carver, the hard-nosed electrician from Harlem who provides the perfect counterpart to McClane's one-man army in a soiled wifebeater. Jackson and Willis' chemistry is enviable, and only magnifies the disappointment at seeing McClane paired with the weiner from the computer commercials in Live Free or Die Hard.

It would've been easy for a tone-deaf actor to turn With a Vengeance into a very uncomfortable 2 hours, but Jackson's Carver steadily resists easy stereotypes of Farrakhan-style black nationalism: he is unafraid to call McClane on his shit, delivering most of the film's sharpest dialogue without ever becoming tokenized or irritating, and bringing dignity and depth to what could've easily been a one-note character. Where Die Hard With a Vengeance falters in comparison the first one--most notably in the disappointingly anticlimactic finale, and the fact that Jeremy Irons' perfectly enjoyable turn as Simon still can't eclipse Allan Rickman's note-perfect Hans Gruber--Zeus ably fills in the gaps.

There's another huge thing that With a Vengeance has going for it, and which the fourth movie ruthlessly redacts: a welcome re-imagining of McClane himself. The indestructible average Joe of the first movie is delightfully muddied here, turned into a kind of alcoholic lowlife as counter-terrorist, charmingly disheveled and solving Simon's riddles through the haze of a hangover, instantly filling police vans with the stink of cheap whiskey. I much prefer this McClane to the scrubbed-down, hairless, post-AA action figure of Live Free or Die Hard.

"This is for The Bonfire of the Vanities, motherfucker."

With the best McClane, the best sidekick, and action sequences that match the first movie's easily, the only thing working against With a Vengeance is a lack of novelty--which, for a lot of critics, is sadly the only vital ingredient in a film. But this is hands down the funniest, most sharply written and effortlessly enjoyable of the Die Hard movies. Even with two more entries reportedly planned, I'm skeptical that the series can be redeemed without the presence of McTiernan--although if the rumors of Patrick Stewart as the villain pan out, I'm there on opening day regardless.

Footnote: parts of The Dark Knight also bear a striking resemblance to Die Hard With a Vengeance, most notably the sequence where hero-taunting villain Simon the Joker threatens to blow up a school hospital, using the ensuing panic as a cover to advance his own elaborate schemes. (Of course, Joker being the Joker, he actually does blow up the hospital, in a stunning scene that reminds you of the days when movies used real explosives instead of computers--in other words, when giants like John McTiernan walked the earth.)