We’ve deliberately chosen “at least” when describing the career of John McTiernan, because there’s an argument to made that his back catalogue of classics extends much further than a quartet.
You’d have to travel pretty far to deny anyone who would begrudge Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, and Die Hard with a Vengeance a place among the pantheon of all-time greats, but there’s also a lot of people willing to die on the hill of Last Action Hero being an all-timer, too, and The Thomas Crown Affair remake could realistically factor into the thinking.
On the other side of the coin, the likes of The 13th Warrior, Rollerball, and Basic are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the latter of which marked McTiernan’s last credit 20 full years ago, although legal troubles did keep him fairly occupied in the interim.
Despite being out of work for two decades, though, he revealed to Cahiers du Cinema that gun-toting scripts keep getting waved in his face and he keeps on knocking them back, even if he could do with the money by his own admission.
“I am still being offered action movies. Last week, I received the story of an armed commando. There are still people ready to finance these things by waving a $2 million payday at my face. I would really need it, but I always refuse. It’s always the same: three guys arm themselves to the teeth and kill a slew of people in Colombia to save someone’s poor daughter. My country has never gotten over these pathological obsessions. Europe is much more civilized.”
Most directors who hadn’t actually directed since 2003 would bite your hand off for a cool couple of million to return to familiar turf, but apparently that’s something that simply doesn’t interest McTiernan.