Die Hard with a Vengeance

No, and it is the only sequel here worth putting beside the original. John McTiernan came back to direct, and the first thing he did was throw away the formula he invented.

There is no building. McClane is hungover, suspended, and sent running around New York by a bomber who sets him riddles over the phone, so the film is a chase and a puzzle rather than a siege. It keeps moving for two hours and the geography of the city does the work the tower did in the first one.

Samuel L. Jackson is the reason it holds. Zeus is a Harlem electrician who gets dragged into this against his will, thinks McClane is a liability and a bigot, says so repeatedly, and is not softened into a sidekick by the end. The film lets the two of them dislike each other for most of its runtime, which is far harder to write than a friendship and much more watchable.

Two things worth knowing. The script began life as an unrelated thriller called Simon Says and was retrofitted, which is why the plot is cleverer than the series usually manages. And the ending you see is not the one shot first: an earlier, much darker finale with Simon confronting McClane directly was filmed and abandoned, and it circulates on home releases. The version in the film is weaker, and it is the only real flaw in a very good action picture.