Die Hard With a Vengeance

Number Three in a series! Collect them all! Location: New York City. For once Bonnie Bedalia is not tied to some railroad track somewhere with Snidely Whiplash looking on and chortling. In fact, she is nowhere to be seen, nor is scumbag reporter William Atherton. John McClane’s Negro sidekick (so far, there has always been a black ally) is a big star this time around, Samuel L. Jackson. He’s Zeus Carver, a black man with an attitude, not at all interested in helping out a white man, but always reluctantly pulled along. I thought the villain was more than a bit overboard this time. Jeremy Irons has the two men moving all over Manhattan. He is pretending to be a mad bomber when all he really wants to do is rob the Federal Reserve of a hundred bazillion dollars. To that end he sets John and Zeus a series of riddles they have to solve. I was rather ashamed of them when they were stumped for a little bit by that old one about going to St. Ives. I thought everybody knew that one, even Bilbo Baggins.