Die Hard With A Vengeance

The third (but not yet final?) installment of the Die Hard series sees Liuetenant John McClane (Bruce Willis) taking on Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons) brother of Hans Gruber (Die Hard). Simon is planting fancy bombs around the city of New York and is getting McClane to perform certain tasks in order to stop the bomb from being triggered.

One such task introduces Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) into the exploits and soon the two of them realise the scale of terror that has forced NYPD to leave the city in search of a large bomb in a primary school. In doing so, the federal reserve bank of New York has been raided of all it's gold and it's up to John and Zeus to retrieve the gold and end the game of Simple Simon.

The video is a marked improvement over the original release, given that it's a totally new transfer found by Village Roadshow. What I noticed straight of is the color balance is perfect as compared to the washed out look of the original version that seemed to have it's hue adjusted incorrectly.

The sharpness levels were perfect with no hint of edge-enhancement to be seen and as always, detail is high on such standard of disc. The only minor flaw is the aliasing throughout the movie. I can't attribute this to anything other than the source but it seems that the level of sharpness in the image brings this out much more.

There was a momentary shwiggle in the image at around 59:36 it looks like water beading down the screen. It's a split second so it shouldn't deter from the movie. I did notice that fade to black that Mike D mentioned before the layer change. It is obvious as it is in a tense moment of the movie so those of you that know the movie inside out will notice it but as an editing stance you could actually pull it off. It shouldn't have been though.

The big bang theory - If something blows up, make the room shake. Wahoo, this soundtrack rocks and the sound of crashing boulders, screaming subway trains, rumbling trucks and huge streaming tunnels of water all give your speakers the enjoyment they deserve.

I didn't see any audio synch problems with this disc and I was looking for them. Dialogue is always clear even when the ambience is pretty loud around you. The only flaw is some harshness in dialogue when the going gets rough.

• Theatrical Trailer - The original trailer "You are about to have a very bad day".
• Interviews - Short and sweet interviews with Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons and Samuel L. Jackson.
• Biographies - short bios of the 3 above folk.
• Music Video - Summer in the City by The Lovin' Spoonful.

Not as great as the first 2 but still stands on its own as a good action flick. I was mightily impressed by the soundtrack which made the movie all that more enjoyable.