Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

  Gun to my head, I could not tell you which I loved more:  Die Hard or Die Hard with a Vengeance.  The original is a classic, but because it is set during Christmas, I find it hard to watch any other time of the year.  It just feels wrong.  Vengeance is not tied to a holiday, however, you can't have the third one without the first or the entire plot falls apart.  Let's just say they are both awesome.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is targeted by a terrorist bomber named Simon (Jeremy Irons) and must perform a series of increasingly difficult challenges in order to prevent more explosions.  One of his first brings him into contact with a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) and the two become unlikely partners as they race to figure out Simon's true objective.

I have seen this movie like a billion times.  This is the first time I have ever turned on the feature commentary, though.  The director, John McTiernan, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Hensleigh, were the two main voices.  I found Hensleigh to be annoying as the track went on, but McTiernan had some real gems of information.  For instance, the only two substantial uses of CGI in the film were the water in the tunnel (which McTiernan hated because water is a bitch to get right) and the sandwich board in Harlem.  Apparently, they realized that morning that it would probably be a bad idea to have your actor actually wear a signboard proclaiming a certain racial slur in a populated neighborhood that may or may not care that you are only doing a movie.  So at the last minute, they switched it to a blank one and digitally added the letters later.

More fun facts:  they actually drove the cab through Central Park, it's apparently really hard to flip a Mercedes (they had to build a cannon), and John McTiernan bought one of the dump trucks.  Why the fuck you would buy a dump truck from your movie set instead of a hundred and one other cool props, I do not know.  But he has one.