The Films – Classic Action
I am a big fan of the Die Hard movies. I love the plots, the actors, the classic one-liners, and just the whole idea of one badass man doing whatever it takes for good to prevail. McClane is no superhero, but he gets it done, everytime, under incredible odds—I love that type of character. There is little need for me to break down all three of these absolute classic action flicks for you; you have probably seen them or at the very least you can find more succinct and informative plot summaries elsewhere. The bottom line is that these three films are some of the best raw action movies ever created, and they’re all movies I can stand to watch a few times a year, something I can only say about a very small group of other movies.
So that aside, we are left with the fourth disc; what is on this fourth disc you ask? Well, not a whole lot. It contains basically three things; a forty minute piece about the first Die Hard movie, a fifteen or so minute piece about the second and third movie, and then three trailers for Die Hard 4, aka Live Free Or Die Hard. That’s really about it; there isn’t anything that remarkable about this disc that any true fans of the series need to see. I mean, who needs three trailers for a movie in theaters that Die Hard fans are going to probably go see and buy anyway?
Presentation – What You Would Expect
As far as I can tell, no re-mastering of the video or audio was done on this set, and it really wasn’t all that needed anyway. The presentation here is good for a DVD release, it won’t knock your socks off but it doesn’t disappoint either both in terms of the audio and video jobs offered here. Personally, I’m very much looking forward to the eventual release on Blu-ray.
Extras – Trimmed Down From the Ultimate Set
In 2001, the Die Hard Ultimate Collection was released and that, by far, is the set to own for Die Hard fans hands down. For more casual Die Hard fans, this DVD set fills the niche, but each movie features just one disc, unlike the Ultimate Collection’s two discs per movie. That said, this current DVD collection has just the features that were on the Ultimate Collection’s movie disc, which isn’t a lot, primarily just director commentaries for each movie. Given that the Ultimate Collection is out of print, it can be somewhat hard to find brand new; furthermore, there are those Die Hard fans that really just want the movie, so the lack of extras here isn’t as scathing as it would be were there not the Ultimate Collection in the wild.
Overall – An Interesting Alternative Set
Without question, this release is far inferior to the Ultimate Collection primarily due to the lack of extras and the inclusion of a pretty useless fourth disc. For the hardcore, the packaging isn’t as nice, either. That said, for Die Hard fans that wouldn’t be bent out of shape by not having all of the extras, and for those that don’t have Die Hard (or its sequels) on DVD already, this is a fairly priced set that should be considered. However, if you’ve held out this long, wait a few more months for the eventual HD version to be released – I can’t say for certain that they’re in the works, but it’d be hard to believe that they aren’t.