CINEMA: Stanley Peskin DIE HARD (With a Vengeance), the third of the Die Hard films,=20 reunites Bruce Willis, as maverick New York cop John McClane,=20 with director John McTiernan.=20 McClane is the victim of a trickster who calls himself Simple=20 Simon. Simon’s games are predicated on children’s nursery=20 rhymes and riddles which McClane and his partner, Zeus (Samuel=20 L Jackson, who was so chilling in Pulp Fiction), need to solve if=20 they are to prevent areas of New York from being blown up. They=20 are forced to do what “Simon says”, and the labours they are=20 required to undergo are Herculean in scope. In a film that has some style and intelligence, McTiernan makes=20 clever use of what Hitchcock called the “McGuffin”, an event=20 which has no importance at all but which is, at the same time,=20 crucially important to the development of the plot.=20 The script has some amusing bawdy jokes, street-wise dialogue,=20 and a laconic truck driver whose encyclopedic memory is vastly=20 entertaining. Even more droll is Jeremy Irons who plays Simon.=20 Claiming he is “a soldier, not a monster”, Irons’ cultivated=20 English tones belie his romantic perception of himself. He is a=20 singularly nasty villain. There are two uneasy areas in the film. The audience is=20 encouraged to mistrust foreigners, and Jackson is sometimes=20 required to play the funny black man. Apart from these rather=20 sour notes, the film has a rollercoaster quality that is often=20