Die Hard With a Vengeance/Une journée en enfer

(A Day in Hell)

aka: John stays home for a change and still blows up some terrorists. 

Things aren't going well for John McClane: his marriage is breaking up, he's been suspended from the force and now the brother of Hans Gruber, the German terrorist he threw off a building a few years back, is threatening to blow up a school if McClane doesn't run around the city solving his demeaning and dangerous puzzles. 

With the help of Zeus, a Harlem electrician, McClane discovers Gruber's plot to distract the NYPD while he clears the federal bank of billions of dollars of gold. 

This is my favourite of the 4 films... Bruce is in top form, and there's Samuel L. Jackson, and one of my favourite dialogues ever:

(Oh, I have a shiny forehead)

Samuel: Why you keep calling me Jésus? I look Puerto Rican to you? 

Bruce: Guy back there called you Jésus. 

Samuel: He didn't say Jésus. He said, "Hey, Zeus!" My name is Zeus. 

Bruce: Zeus? 

Samuel: Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don't fuck with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that? 

Bruce: No, I don't have a problem with that.  

Ha ha.

So you get the vengeance bit: Simon Gruber's brother was one of the terrorists he blew up in the first film. And Simon isn't a happy bunny. He's blowing up subway stations and schools, etc. Funny that they took another Brit to play a German baddie, by the way. (After Alan Rickman, it's now Jeremy Irons. What is Hollywood afraid of? Some diplomatic incident with Germany?). 

Onto the French title. Une journee en enfer. The only explanation I can think of is that, well, you know, it is a pretty shit day, running around, trying to get stuff not to blow up, etc. So I guess if someone asked John how his day went he'd probably would say that he'd spent a day in hell. 

What bothers me is that, at this stage, there is absolutely no sense of continuity with the first 2 films. There is absolutely no way of knowing it is a sequel to another film. Unless they were trying to attract people who didn't like the first 2 films by deceptively naming the film something different, hoping they'd have forgotten about the first 2?

Note that the French Canadian title is "Marche ou crève — vengeance définitive"  and it is also pathetic. (Proper translation: - Sink or Swim - definitive vengeance or literally marche ou creve is walk or die, so at least they kept the "die" there somewhere). 

Suggestion: Piege a New York? At this stage, anything with piege in would have been ok, I guess. 

Translation grade: E - for the lack of idea and relevance this time. 

Obviously this does not apply to the film which is absolutely fantastic!