Product Description

Bruce Willis, Graham Greene, Sam Philips, Justin Long, Mary Elizabeth Winstead Directors: John McTiernan, Renny Harlin, Len Wiseman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #376 in DVD
• Brand: DVD Boxsets
• Released on: 2007-10-29
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: .80 pounds
• Running time: 503 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Now joined by a hit fourth instalment, the Die Hard Quadrilogy is, bluntly, an essential set for any self-respecting fan of action cinema.

The gold, of course, is the original Die Hard, a flat-out five star classic pretty much without equal. Introducing Bruce Willis’ John McClane as an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, it’s littered with great lines, great characters, and genre-defining moments. Plus, in Alan Rickman, it has one of the finest cinematic villains of the past few decades.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder inevitably dilutes matters, this time switching the action to Washington’s Dulles International Airport. But with Willis and a good number of characters returning from the original, it’s a fun--if at times brutal--ride, that scores highly in the entertainment stakes.

Die Hard: With A Vengeance, the third film in the series, pretty much strips away the bulk of the supporting cast, and replaces them with the not-significant figure of Samuel L Jackson. It changes the dynamic of the film into a buddy-buddy movie, albeit a good one. And again, it’s a ride that’s hard not to enjoy, with Jeremy Irons giving good measure as McClane’s chief foe.

Finally, Die Hard 4.0 is a real surprise. Given the fact that it arrived over a decade after the third film, it finds Willis and relative newcomer Justin Long shouldering an entertaining, old fashioned action film, that papers over its occasional cracks by asking its lead actor to ramp things up a gear when necessary. And watching John McClane do what he does--even when any hint of reality is thrown out of the window near the end--is endlessly entertaining.

So while none of the sequels have matched the peerless original, the Die Hard Quadrilogy nonetheless delivers one classic, and three very enjoyable action movies. And you can’t argue with that kind of hit rate. Always, always bet on McClane... --Simon Brew

Synopsis
New York cop John McClane finds himself battling an assortment of terrorists in DIE HARD, DIE HARD 2, DIE HARD WITH A VENGENCE, and DIE HARD 4.0.
In DIE HARD, New York cop John McClane goes to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to visit his estranged wife at her company's Christmas party, held on the top floor of a huge skyscraper. The building is invaded by terrorists, leaving the cop, who's escaped to the roof, as the other partygoers' only hope for survival.
In DIE HARD 2, Renegade commandos seize a major international airport to rescue a drug lord from justice. Detective McClane, there to meet his wife, must battle incompetent airport security, hard-headed, gung-ho anti-terrorist squads and a deadly winter snowstorm to break the terrorist's grip before his wife's plane runs out of fuel.
In DIE HARD WITH A VENGENCE, a psychotic terrorist targets New York city cop John McClane, who gets help from a civilian explosives expert.
In DIE HARD 4.0, John McClane is after a group of Internet-savvy terrorists who threaten the security of the United States and have kidnapped his daughter. However, McClane is helped along the way by an unassuming computer hacker he has just arrested.

Customer Reviews

Yippee Ki-Yay!
If you like action films, you've got to own this boxset!

Die Hard (1988): New York cop John McClane, facing Christmas alone, flies to Los Angeles to see his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and their kids in an attempt to patch things up. He arrives at his wife's high tech office building in the middle of their Christmas party just as it is gatecrashed by the ruthless master criminal Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and a dozen fellow activists intent on relieving the Nakatomi Corporation of six hundred million dollars in negotiable bonds...

Die Hard 2 - Die Harder (1990): On a snowy Christmas Eve in the nation's capital, a team of terrorists has seized a major International Airport, and now holds thousands of holiday travellers hostage. The terrorists, a renegade band of crack military commandos led by a murderous rogue officer (William Sadler), have come to rescue a drug lord from justice. They've prepared for every contingency, except one: John McClane, an off-duty cop seized by a feeling of deadly de-ja-vu.

Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995): This time, New York cop John McClane (Willis) is the personal target of the mysterious Simon (Jeremy Irons), a terrorist determined to blow up the entire city if he doesn't get what he wants. Accompanied by an unwilling civilian partner (Samuel L. Jackson), McClane careens wildly from one end of New York City to the other as he struggles to keep up with Simon's deadly game.

Die Hard 4.0: Live Free Or Die Hard (2007): A computer genius is systematically shutting down the computer infrastructure of the US. The mysterious figure behind the scheme seems to have figured out every digital angle, but he hasn't counted on an old fashioned 'analogue' cop, John McClane.

Four of the best action films of all time, starring Bruce Willis as fast-talking John McClane, are finally available in one collection. With only the last half of Die Hard 3 being a let-down, each one of these excellent films were the best from each year they were released and can be watched over and over again. Brilliant stuff!

Dissapointing..
Obviously all these films are classics in their own right, and immensely entertaining.

Where this box set really falls down is that is far from an ultimate edition. As previously mentioned, none of the films are special editions, and are all packaged as single disc versions only, which I find very dsappointing. I weould have thought, the opportunity would have been made to put together a more polished version with double disc editionsand packed full of extras as the films were when they were released as the trilogy set.

If you are a big fan of the films and love the extras that come with films, documentries and extra scenes, so on and so forth... then I have to say this isn't the boxset for you. I would advise you get the trilogy version and then buy the special edition of Die Hard 4.0.

If however you do like the films as they are and aren't bothered about the extras, you can't go far wrong.

For me though, a lover of these films, and of all the extras that went with the original special editions, I feel this boxset has been very hurriedly put together, somewhat rushed and all in all, not what it could have been.

John McClane just keeps on ticking.
If you're looking to buy this, you probably already know if you like the Die Hard movies so I'll skip the first three as for most people, the first film out of the box will be Die Hard 4.0 otherwise known as Live Free or Die Hard. It's an enjoyable romp although any sheen of reality that the first three had has been stripped away for this installment. This movies' terrorists appear to be of the superhuman variety, exhibiting rather unbelievable gymnastic abilities coupled with the capability to sustain impacts that would kill most people. It's also the least sweary of all the Die Hard movies, attaining a 15 certificate instead of the usual 18. Oh, and some parts of the film have obviously been dubbed in post production. That happens in all movies because otherwise you'd have the same inconsistent soundscape you get on a camcorder but you usually don't notice because they're saying the same lines. In this film, there are scenes where their lips are clearly saying one thing and their voices are saying something else. It's really annoying when TV networks do that but you'd think a Hollywood studio would pull it off a bit better. But don't let that put you off as it's a rip-roaring action movie.

The boxset itself seems a little haphazardly put together. None of the original three movies are brand new prints so they all have dirt and scractches on them, although they're not really old prints either and the picture quality is probably still superior to what you might see on TV. They're also all in 16:9 Full Widescreen whereas Die Hard 4.0 is in Letterbox Widescreen. It's a bit of a mystery as to why. Die Hard With A Vengeance has a really strange box, cheap and amateurish and nothing like the VHS coverart that came out years ago. This is the only Die Hard movie not produced and released by Fox so presumably that's the reason.

You might as well buy all four together unless you're a die hard 'Die Hard' fan in which case you may be better off looking for remastered special editions of the earlier movies for better picture quality.