Die Hard 2 (1990)

Die Hard was an absolute success (check out my review HERE).   But sometimes (most times), the follow-up sequel really doesn’t get very good.  What about Die Hard 2? Let’s check it out 🙂

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, Reginald VelJohnson

Christmas has arrived once again.  John McClane (Bruce Willis) is in Washington airport waiting for his wife, Holly’s (Bonnie Bedelia) to arrive.  When he suddenly sees some suspicious people heading into the baggage area of the airport (you know where they send the different baggage to different planes or whatnot..I don’t know what thats called).  He follows them in and when one of them get away, the airport police just take it as a normal baggage thief.  Shortly after, he realizes when all the planes are put on delayed status, that terrorists, lead by Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) has disabled all transmitting and communication functions from the Communications Tower, Dulles Tower to the aircrafts making the scheduled flights trapped in the skies doing circles with no idea what is going on in the airport.  They ask for certain instructions to be followed as they wish to land a criminal, Chief Esperanza and take him away.  John McClane must now find a way to land his wife’s plane safely before it runs out of fuel no matter what it costs as he tries to search out Colonel Stuart and his crew.

Die Hard 2 is not a bad movie but its not as epic as the first one.  It was fun to watch for the most part.  Bruce Willis is both a comic in a sarcastic way given the situation. He is still the McClane that gives it his all and does everything he can to get his wife back and fight the bad guys.  There is a decent support cast.  The issue is that there are certain fight scenes that seem rigid and staged.  This was not the case in the first one.  Also, the effects are not too great but I can overlook it seeing as it is an aged movie.  1990 effects till now has improved a lot but I’m not too picky with effects when the entertainment level is there.

I always like to look at the bad guys. In this one, we primarily have Colonel Stuart, played by William Sadler. Honestly, I don’t really remember this guy in any other movies other than Die Hard 2.  *runs off to look at IMDB* Ah, so the only role I know him from is the guy I wanted to punch as a stupid father in August Rush.  Not impressive… Either way, him as a villain was alright.  I just thought that every time he was transmitting a message it sounded like a mechanical robotic voice. He has a very answering machine recording type of voice which made me laugh a little at it.  I’m not exactly sure that was supposed to be the effect.

This action flick lacked a bit of the intensity that it had in the first one.  It really tries to get us engaged as to what will happen next and technologically, what could be done next, but it wasn’t very much the action that did it all.  There were explosions and plane crashes, fire and shooting and all that but it wasn’t as frequent as I would have wanted from it.

However, whenever I watch these action flicks, I ask myself one thing..was it enjoyable? Did I have fun with it? Fact is…I did! Because John McClane’s character still kicks some serious butt.  Every time he enters on the screen and does his thing, he does it in a great way! Plus, we have a bit of continuation from the first one, with the situation of the in plane situation from his wife’s angle.  And we bring in a little cameo with outside help from his buddy from the first one.  And other characters also.  A new character that really gave a bit of comic relief chemistry was the janitor or something like that called Marvin played by Tom Bower.  That guy cracked me up! He was such an amazing character 🙂

Overall, Die Hard 2 was an enjoyable flick. As much as the villain didn’t make me feel very threatened, Bruce Willis’s John McClane still managed to light up the screen with his comedic lines matched with his way to get himself out of intense and tight situations to find the solution to save the day!