Twas the night… after Christmas and John McClane is having to deal with terrorists again! It’s time to look at the second Die Hard film and the only other one to be once again set on Christmas Eve. While nowhere near as iconic and fun as the first, nor as entertaining and original as the third, Die Hard 2 is still a fun two hours that does mix some original elements in amongst sadly far too much copying of the first film. Let’s take a look!
Die Hard 2 opens with John McClane (Bruce Willis) at a Washington airport waiting for the arrival of his wife as this is the only film in the franchise where John is actually happy with his life, he’s even an LAPD cop meaning he moved to be with Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) after the first film, but in order for this film’s plot to happen Holly needed to be in the air so the their family are presumably celebrating Christmas at her parents house and John and the kids flew ahead. Sadly for McClane his peaceful Christmas is about to once again become a terrorist-filled nightmare after he spots some suspicious people going into a baggage area and ends up in the fire fight with them. The local Captain Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) wants nothing to do with him so John relies on his old buddy Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) to scan some fingerprints for him and things click into place that something more is a foot.
John McClane finds out what day of the year it is.
This is sadly where the story becomes weaker than the first as the terrorists this time actually ARE international freedom fighter-types who want to free someone who is in American custody in General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero) whose prisoner flight is due to land in Washington Airport that night. The leader is Colonel William Stuart (William Sadler) who sadly is just a generic, mostly stone-faced villain with zero depth, a great departure compared to Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber. Another antagonist gets added later but really it turns the story into a more generic action film due to having such a basic villain force. Their plan is at least different, they take control of an airport and threaten to crash all the planes looking to land if they don’t allow them to retrieve General Esperanza, a threat they do follow through with early in the film. Holly is on one of these planes, giving John a personal investment.
“Hello? I’d like to find out if I’m allowed to kill loads of people as a cop like McClane can? …. What do you mean I’m not as sexy?!”
The other criticism is that it copies a lot from Die Hard, something that became even more obvious after “Die Hard with a Vengeance” went in such a different direction. They have scenes of a SWAT team being taken out, McClane has to crawl around vents and is helped out by a friendly civilian (Marvin the janitor played by Tom Bower), William Atherton is back as arsehole reporter Dick Thornburg and he gets K.O’d by Holly again… plus the actual last moments of the film are nearly identical. Still it has the iconic scene where McClane is stuck in the front half of a plane as terrorists are throwing grenades in and escapes the situation by pulling the ejector seat just in time, travelling up towards the camera as fiery explosion flashes in the background. It’s stupid in a great way…
Overall Thoughts:
It’s the only bit from the film that everyone remembers! Hooray!
Die Hard 2: Die Harder is very much “Die Hard 2” compared to other entries in the series as it plays it very safe with the plot by copying a lot of what made the first work, but sadly the villains of the piece are far, far less interesting. It does have some fun scenes and Bruce Willis is still on fine form, so it’s not like it’s not fun (that comes at the end of the Die Hard film series…) but given what comes before and after it sticks out as “not as good”.
The only major plot point comes from when a group of soldiers arrive led by a man named Major Grant (John Amos) who starts off as very anti-McClane but the two end up striking something of a friendship… until Grant is revealed as working for Stuart and General Esperanza. All of them together get on a plane ready to leave but McClane gets lowered from a helicopter onto the wing of the plane and fist-fights Grant until he falls into the plane’s engine. Sadly he can’t beat Stuart but on his way off the plane he pulls the fuel dump lever and as it takes off McClane lights the fuel on fire with a “yippie-ki-yay mother**cker” and watches as it explodes mid-air. The flaming fuel trail acts as a landing strip and everyone is saved.
“Stop taking down all these terrorists single-handedly, it makes us look bad!”
As I mentioned this leads to a retreat of Die Hard’s ending as Holly and John leave on Marvin’s car as “Let it snow” plays…
Hogan Reviews 