The Die Hard Collection - BRD

Die Hard

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Live Free or Die Hard

Studio:

Theatrical: 20^th Century Fox Pictures (USA)

DVD: 20^th Century Fox Pictures Home Entertainment

1.5 cm Blu-ray case: 4 discs

Release Date: November 20, 2007

Review by Leonard Norwitz

Die Hard

Directed by John McTiernan

1988

	Also available individually in high-definition

Video:

Aspect ratio: approx. 2.40:1

Feature film: 1080p / AVC

131 minutes

Supplements: HD/SD

55 chapters

Audio:

English 5.1 DTS Master Lossless

English DD 5.1 Surround

French DD 5.1 Surround

Spanish DD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles:

English, English, Spanish, Korean & Chinese

Extras

• Audio Commentary by Director McTiernan & Production Designer Jackson DeGovia

• Audio Commentary by Special Effects Supervisor Richard Edlund

• Subtitled Commentary by Cast & Crew (more crew than cast)

• Newscasts

• Still Gallery

• Theatrical Trailers in HD (for DH2, DH3, DH4 and Alien vs. Predator)

(Not brought over from the SD edition is The Cutting Room, a fascinating look at the editing procedures used for this movie)

Standard Blu-ray case: 1 disc

Release Date: November 20, 2007

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Directed by Renny Harlin

1990

Also available individually in high-definition

Video:

Aspect ratio: approx. 2.40:1

Feature film: 1080p / AVC

124 minutes

Supplements: HD/SD

40 chapters

Audio:

English 5.1 DTS Master Lossless

English DD 5.1 Surround

French DD 5.1 Surround

Spanish DD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles:

English, English, Spanish, Korean & Chinese

Extras

• Commentary by Director Harlin (excellent & densely packed)

• TV Special: The Making of Die Hard 2: Die Harder (in SD)

• Featurette: Chaos on a Conveyor Belt (in SD)

• Featurette: Breaking the Ice (in SD)

• Promotional Interviews with Harlin and actor William Sadler (in SD)

• Deleted Scenes (in SD)

• Theatrical Trailers in HD (for DH, DH3, DH4 and Alien vs. Predator) + additional trailers for DH2

Standard Blu-ray case: 1 disc

Release Date: November 20, 2007

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Directed by John McTiernan

1995

Also available individually in high-definition

Video:

Aspect ratio: approx. 2.40:1

Feature film: 1080p / AVC

131 minutes

Supplements: HD/SD

40 chapters

Audio:

English 5.1 DTS Master Lossless

English DD 5.1 Surround

French DD 5.1 Surround

Spanish DD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles:

English, English, Spanish, Korean & Chinese

Extras

• Commentary by Director McTiernan, Screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh and Fox exec Tom Sherak.

• TV Special; HBO First Look (in SD)

• TV Special; A Night To Die For - hosted by Samuel L. Jackson (in SD)

• Featurette: Villains With a Vengeance (in SD)

• Alternate Ending (in SD)

• Storyboard Sequence(in SD)

• Interview with Bruce Willis (only 6 minutes, in SD)

• Theatrical Trailers in HD (for DH, DH2, DH4 and Alien vs. Predator) + additional trailers & TV spots for DH3

Standard Blu-ray case: 1 disc

Release Date: November 20, 2007

Live Free or Die Hard

Directed by Len Wiseman

2007

Also available individually in high-definition

Video:

Aspect ratio: approx. 2.40:1

Feature film: 1080p / AVC

130 minutes

Supplements: HD/SD

16 chapters

Audio:

English 5.1 DTS Master Lossless

English DD 5.1 Surround

French DD 5.1 Surround

Spanish DD 5.1 Surround

Subtitles:

English, English, Spanish, Korean & Chinese

Extras

• Commentary with Director Len Wiseman, Editor Nicholas de Toth and Bruce Willis

• Feature length Documentary: Analog Cop in a Digital World (outstanding, in SD)

• Featurette: Yippie Ki-Yay, Mother ****** (Interview with Kevin Smith & Bruce Willis, in SD)

• Guyz Nite Music Video (in SD)

• Theatrical Trailers in HD for all four Die Hard films + Alien vs. Predator and The Simpsons Movie and The Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Standard Blu-ray case: 1 disc

Release Date: November 20, 2007

Die Hard Collection ~ Comment

Fox Home Entertainment is offering the Die Hard franchise on Blu-ray as a complete 4-piece collection in a single case, or each Die Hard movie separately. If you buy the collection, you save $30 over the price of their purchase individually – or, to put it cruelly, you are paying an extra $10 for the appallingly awful Die Hard 2.

Those responsible: All had the same composer. DH1 & DH3 had the same director and production designer. DH1 & DH3 were based on the same novel - Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever (Thorp also wrote The Detective, the novel for which Sinatra's 1968 movie was based); DH2 was based on a different story to start with - 58 Minutes by Walter Wager (not to be confused with director, Walter Wanger); but all three had different screenwriters. DH1 & DH2 shared the same producers (Charles & Lawrence Gordon), though others were involved in DH2 at high levels. DH4 assembles an entirely new production team (writers, director and producer, cinematographer, even the composer); and gone, too, are any traces of media reps to make a buck on the sufferings of others – Praise the Lord!

I found myself comparing John McClane to Harry Callahan and the Die Hard and Dirty Harry franchises. Callahan is a loner – not only professionally, but also in his personal relationships - which is to say he pretty much has none. McClane also works alone, but that seems more an unintended consequence of his attitude about himself than of others. The same is true for his relationship to his wife and, eventually, his children. He loves them, to be sure, but only from a safe distance. And he prefers to protect them than to serve, which is why it is remotely plausible that we find them in harm's way so often.

Right out of the box, Callahan is focused on his prime suspect, usually to the embarrassment of his superiors. What we like about Harry is his dogged pursuit of bad guys who hide behind the law or whatever convenience is handy. He uses up partners because his field of vision is narrow – a state of affairs consistent with his lack of humor. McClane is always caught up in the effects of the perpetrator and wades through them, eliminating his henchmen one by one or better, as he makes his way to the top. The effect of this – I hesitate to call it a strategy, though it is a deliberate ploy of his writers – is to give us a better chance to know the bad guy.

This is what makes the first and third installments in the series so satisfying: Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber and Jeremy Irons' Simon simply ooze intelligence and wit. Even his various henchmen are quickly and neatly drawn as people (e.g. the nearly wordless bet that Karl & Theo make that Takagi would give up the security codes.) It is the absence of these layers of interest, in great part, that sinks Die Harder: Col. Stuart is a Neanderthal strategist without a shred of humor. (One could argue that John Malkovich's Mitch Leary has no humor either, but he is the furthest thing from stupid.) I mean, what can we say about a man such as Stuart whose back-up plan - in the event the pilot of the plane carrying General Esperanza (now, that's funny!) would not heed his bogus landing instructions - was that the general would somehow break free of his chains and commandeer the plane. Of course, it doesn't help matters that everything about DH2 - from the characters, to the situations, to the sets - seems like paper cutouts.

In Die Hard With a Vengeance, for the first half or so of the movie anyway, the writers regained the sense of humor, proportion and mission that was utterly lost in DH2. Once McClane and his erstwhile partner are hot on the trail of the bad guys things became more or less routine, though suspenseful, entertaining and, in their characteristic and lovable way, preposterous. While less than ten years separated the first and third Die Hard movies, it was not for another seventeen years that John McClane was to resurface, minus hair. He looks older, for sure, but he is still the same guy we have come to know, love and respect, despite his dysfunctional attitudes and behavior regarding his family.

From Moonlighting on, Bruce Willis has made his living off of his cynical charm, that sly faux-smile of his that is what John McClane is all about. He smirks as he guns down the bad guys, but he also smirks when he should be taking a hard look at his life. Instead, by the time of DH3, he is wallowing in self-pity and borderline alcoholism, and partly for this reason, he gives up more than his share of blood in the pursuit of justice. Callahan, by contrast, is not a risk-taker. He has eyes in the back of his head, and he's more of a vengeance freak than we ought to be comfortable with. While we may harbor fantasies of wishing we were more like Harry Callahan, we already see ourselves in John McClane.

The Die Hard Collection ~ The Score Card

Die Hard : 9

The Story: McClane is a New York City cop on Christmas holiday on a visit to his wife and kids in Los Angeles. His wife, Holly, has moved to L.A. along with her career. John decided not to go with her because, as he tells his limo driver, he has a backlog of bad guys that he needs to deal with. Holly is now a respected member of the Nakatomi Corporation, whose L.A. office is throwing a huge party on the 30^th floor of 20^th Century Fox Headquarters. McClane arrives at the party just minutes before Hans Gruber and his associates commandeer the situation, automatic weapons akimbo. They seem to be after the several hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bearer bonds tucked away in the company vault. McClane becomes a de facto tactical unit that keeps getting in their way until the local cops and, eventually, the feds, arrive to make bad matters worse.

Also available individually in high-definition

Image : 7 (7/9)

The score of 7 indicates a relative level of excellence compared to other Blu-ray DVDs. The score in parentheses represents: first, a value for the image in absolute terms; and, second, how that image compares to what I believe is the current best we can expect in the theatre, though in this case I speculate that the movie looked better 20 years ago.

The improvement over the SD is largely in terms of color and luminance – no small thing when it comes to a movie shot mostly in faux-night. But if you're looking for heaps of sharpness, you won't find it here. The image is consistent from start to finish – I'll say that for it - still, I wondered for a moment if my projector had slipped out of focus. To be more precise, the picture is not all that much sharper than a properly scaled high quality SD: increased resolution doesn't get you very far if the source material doesn't have it to start with. This is not a question of age. Compare this BRD Die Hard image to the 1983 Trading Places and you can see at a glance how much less fuzzy an "older" movie can be.

Here's a curiosity: the 20^th Century Fox logo that appears at the start of the film is incorrectly displayed. Evidently, it has not been properly morphed – ana- or otherwise: it's stretched and squashed. I compared this rendering to my R2/Japan SD edition and sure enough, it is similarly wrong. In addition, the SD's overall aspect ratio is closer to 2.15:1 than the Blu-ray's 2.4:1. That said, the IMDB lists the OAR for Die Hard 70 mm prints as 2.20:1, so take this for whatever it's worth.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Die Hard 2 [Die Harder] : 3

The Story: (I'm not sure if I can give a straightforward account of the plot while sober, but I'll give it whirl.) John and Holly have reconciled and are back east. She is returning from a brief trip for the Christmas holiday and is expected to land at Dulles shortly. While McClane waits at the airport he follows some suspicious activity that soon reveals itself as a plot by renegade mercenaries to take over airport communications so they can land the criminal general of their choice to lead them into god knows what. To make sure the authorities know these guys mean business the bad guys assure them (with a convincing demonstration) that any attempt to land the planes circling overhead while meet with disaster. Since air traffic control is aware of the situation, it passes understanding that they tell the planes to remain in a holding pattern while their fuel runs out.

Also available individually in high-definition

Image : 7.5 (6~9/9)

The score of 8 indicates a relative level of excellence compared to other Blu-ray DVDs. The score in parentheses represents: first, a value for the image in absolute terms; and, second, how that image compares to what I believe is the current best we can expect in the theatre. The picture quality here is all over the map, but when it is at its best, it is clearer than for the first Die Hard.

Audio & Music : 7.5/7

As with the image quality, the audio is just a skosh clearer. Dialogue is the best beneficiary.

Operations : 5

All of the Die Hard Blu-ray menus (save Live Free or Die Hard) are counter-intuitive in that the various functions (Play, Scenes, Extras, Set-up) are in a circle that move in the opposite direction as are activated on the remote. There are too many chapters made all the more inaccessible by a retarded response to scene search. If you want to advance as much as twenty chapters, it's much faster to simply press chapter advance on the remote.

Extras : 6

(see details in listings for each separate movie above)

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Die Hard With a Vengeance : 6

The Story: John McClane is now a suspended NYC cop, separated from wife and kids (as are we for the duration of the movie.) A department store explodes onto a busy downtown street. The bomber - Hans Gruber's brother, no less - insists the police department send McClane on a series of chases all over town to prevent new bombs from going off. But of course these are just a diversion from his true intent. The big difference in this DH installment (and, as it will be again in DH4) is that McClane picks up a "partner" along the way, quite by chance – a Harlem shopkeeper, Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L. Jackson (think: The Defiant Ones without chains and with a good deal of street-smart humor.) Not having McLane's family handy, the filmmakers couldn't resist finding a way to have Zeus' two nephews in the line of fire. I took off a point for the lapse of good sense and another for the interminable finale.