1. Our hero who woke up hung over and has already run half the length of Manhattan, wrecked but saved a subway train, been in a small elevator with four Uzi-bearing 8-foot-tall Aryan thugs yet emerged unscathed after killing them all in less that four seconds, is now chasing the gold-bearing dump trucks up a new pipe shaft only to realize the bad guys have turned on the spigot and millions of gallons of water are rushing down the pipe and he is about to die — except he shoots up the manhole, rests for a split second atop the geyser and then is set down gently right next to his buddy with a fast car handy.

2. Our hero is riding in a stolen truck across the Hudson River when he sees the bad guys on a ship going below him, so he uses the handy winch he found on the truck to lasso the ship and begin down the cable arm over arm. Then the cable snaps and whips him and his buddy down onto the ship’s steel deck. Splattered like a dropped jar of spaghetti sauce? Noooo. He peels his chin off the floor and says, “Wow, that hurt.” Then he goes and fights the last 8-foot-tall Aryan with a length of chain.

Just like Wily E. Coyote and Road Runner, he gets blown up, falls off the high places, pokes a hole in the ground and then crawls up to fight again. Five minutes in Die Hard III is like a visit to Lourdes for the healing power it contains.

This is not to say Die Hard II lacked this critical characteristic. The bad guys have Uzis but cannot hit the broad side of a barn while our hero can shoot his 4-inch pistol while falling off a snowmobile and hit the gas tank of another snowmobile travelling at 40 miles per hour. And his lighter can light up a trail of aviation fuel that burns long enough to land 30 planes stacked up on approach.

Very good stuff, and Fred Thompson there in the control tower to lend his gravitas to what otherwise would be a farce. Pherhaps Fred (see, he’s already a one-name celebrity) can lend his gravitas to the farce that is modern American politics.