dragonfire88's Full Review: Die Hard 2: Die Harder
After Die Hard became a huge hit, it wasn't surprising that a sequel was made in 1990. Die Hard 2: Die Harder was just as entertaining as the first movie.
John McClane was waiting at the Dulles airport to pick up Holly on Christmas Eve. John was already in Washington, D.C. with their kids to spend the holiday with Holly’s parents. Unfortunately John wasn’t going to have a peaceful holiday. Colonel Stuart was leading a team of mercenaries and they took over the airport, cutting off certain systems so that the control tower couldn’t talk to the planes in the air. The planes were in holding patterns because Stuart wouldn’t let any of them land. Stuart intended to free a drug lord that was being brought into the country. John quickly realized that something was wrong even before the mercenaries acted, but he couldn’t get anyone to listen to him. John didn’t want to deal with the situation, but he felt like he had to because Holly’s plane was circling the airport and running out of fuel.
Die Hard 2: Die Harder followed the pattern of the first movie in having everything take place over the course of a few hours on Christmas Eve. I think it was supposed to be a year after the events of the first movie. John and Holly just can’t seem to have a normal Christmas. If I were them, I think I’d stay home in bed with the covers pulled over my head instead of venturing away from home on Christmas Eve again. The fact that it was Christmas Eve was made clear without it being brought up a lot. A few Christmas songs were heard and decorations were shown around the terminal as well. The airport was packed with people because of the holiday and there were many planes scheduled to land as well which put a lot of people in danger. There was also a horrible snow storm hitting the area that added additional complications.
This movie was clearly a sequel, but it can stand on its own. The plot for this movie was similar to the plot of the first movie while also adding in a few new things as well. John was still basically dealing with the situation on his own even though the airport police and even an Army unit was sent in. Everyone else seemed to be underestimating what they were facing. Once again Holly was in danger, so that aspect of the plot wasn’t that original. It did work for the movie and gave John believable motivation for getting involved. The only main difference was that this movie was set at an airport and featured hundreds of people in danger on the airplanes circling the airport. I didn’t mind that there weren’t more differences between the movies.
The action started very early when John confronted two of the mercenaries because he felt that something was wrong. That was the first of many shootouts throughout the movie. John was involved in almost all of the action scenes in some way. Several people were injured or killed and a lot of blood was shed. I don’t think John got injured as much as he did in the first movie. John frequently took on several men who had machine guns when he was armed only with a handgun. He somehow managed to dodge all the bullets flying at him and he even survived a few explosions. That aspect of the movie really wasn’t that believable, but it didn’t bother me that much because the movie was entertaining and well done for an action movie. It was very violent overall even though John did make several humorous remarks that lightened the mood at times. The movie did deserve to be rated R. The word that rhymes with luck, along with several variations of the word, were used throughout the movie, usually by John. This really isn’t a movie for children to watch.
Almost every scene in Die Hard 2: Die Harder took place either somewhere in the airport or on board one of the airplanes. Holly’s plane was the one that was shown most often. Colonel Stuart and his men were able to tap into the systems used by the control tower and airplanes fairly quickly. After that happened, they gave the tower a few minutes to give instructions to the airplanes before cutting off all communication. I don’t know how things work in airports, but some of what was going on didn’t seem right to me. Planes that weren’t already in the airport’s air space were diverted to other airports. The other planes were instructed to just hold at the outer marker instead of being sent to other airports. I would have thought that all the planes would have been able to be sent to other airports instead of having to just circle for almost two hours, burning up all their fuel. Of course, if all the planes were sent to other airports, then there wouldn’t have been the urgent need to deal with Stuart and his men. The fact that planes were in danger of crashing, and Stuart even caused one to crash, could upset some viewers.
John and Holly’s marriage was in much better shape than it had been in the first movie. John had moved to Los Angeles and was living with his family there. He was also on the Los Angeles police force. Holly and John really only had one scene together, so they had almost no interaction with each other. It was made clear from a conversation early in the movie that they had a lot of love for each other. The movie did show how John was dealing with her being in danger again. Their marriage wasn’t the main focus of the movie, but it did help provide motivation for John to get involved. It would have been nice if John and Holly had more scenes together. I think they had a few more minutes together in the first movie.
There were four returning characters in Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Al was only briefly shown when John called him to check on something. There really wasn’t a logical way to have him in more of the movie since he wasn’t even in the same city. It would have been nice if he and John could have had the same type of interaction that they had in the first movie. Richard Thornburg, the arrogant reporter, was one of the other passengers on Holly’s plane. He was still acting like a jerk and had managed to offend all of the flight attendants. He was sure something was going on and he used somewhat sneaky methods to find out so he could do a live report through one of the phones on the plane. William Atherton was really good in the part.
John was happier with his life in general when the movie started. He wasn’t overly happy about spending Christmas with his in-laws, but he was dealing with it. He just wanted to pick up Holly and have a nice, normal Christmas. He was not pleased when he realized something was going on at the airport and no one was listening to him. He was told to let others handle the situation, which he would have loved to have done. He did not want to get into shootouts all around the airport and be in dangerous situations again, but he felt like he had to do those things to save Holly. Bruce Willis was perfect as John. Holly was mainly just shown on her plane, so she really didn’t have that much to do.
There were several new characters introduced in the movie. John had to deal with most of them in one way or another. None of them were developed much at all. Colonel Stuart was just focused on his plan and very brutal. There wasn’t a good explanation for why he was doing it either. William Sadler was believable in the part. Carmine was the captain in charge of the airport police. He did not want John involved in any way and was rude to him every chance he got. Trudeau was in charge in the control tower and was trying to do everything he could to make sure the people on the planes were safe. Major Grant was the man in charge of the special army unit that showed up to deal with Stuart and his men. Robert Patrick appeared very briefly in a few scenes as one of Stuart’s men.
Main Cast
John Amos - Major Grant William Atherton - Richard Thornburg Bonnie Bedelia - Holly McClane Dennis Franz - Captain Carmine Lorenzo Robert Patrick - O’Reilly Fred Dalton Thompson - Trudeau Reginald VelJohnson - Al Powell Bruce Willis - John McClane
Renny Harlan - Director
DVD Information
The copy of Die Hard 2: Die Harder that I own is a two disc DVD. This version was first released several years ago. I think another version of the DVD has been released recently. I have seen versions of all of the Die Hard movies on DVD with different pictures on the cases. I don’t know if the newer versions have different extras or not. The first DVD has the anamorphic widescreen version of the movie and a commentary with the director.
Most of the extras were on the second disc. There was a documentary on the making the movie that original aired on television before the release of the movie. Some of the cast and crew were featured talking about the making of the movie. It was explained how some of the special effects were created. I did enjoy the documentary. There was also a shorter featurette that included some of the same footage that had originally been made to serve as promotional information. There was a featurette on the villain, an interview with Renny Harlan, visual effects breakdowns, a storyboard sequence, behind the scenes vignettes and four deleted scenes. One or two of the scenes were alternate or longer versions of scenes that were in the final version of the movie. I did enjoy the extras that were included on the DVD.
Die Hard 2: Die Harder is one of the better sequels and is worth watching, especially for fans of Die Hard. It was just as entertaining as the first movie.
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