Die Hard 2: Die
Harder
1990
D: Renny Harlin
**********
Pros: Somewhat competent execution, Some clever moments,
Good villain
Cons: Basically a clone of the first with inferior
directing, The Glock 7
I never
thought of
Die Hard 2 as a particularly
good movie.
In fact, I always placed it
in the dust bin of underwhelming and forgettable sequels.
It wasn’t until recently that I found out
that other people seem to think highly of it, citing it as proof that the
franchise could survive as a series.
It
even
scores higher on Rotten Tomatoes than the vastly superior
Die Hard with a Vengeance, which I do
believe to be a worthy follow up to the first.
In fact, I think this is my least favorite Die Hard movie because at least A Good Day to Die Hard had a really good chase scene to show for it.
The main problem with Die Hard 2 is that it's forgettable. One could watch it multiple times without remembering what happened, except for a memorable dog-kicking scene, some nonsense about ceramic Glocks and a brief image of Robert Patrick. This is because the movie sends out radiation the temporarily shuts down the brain's capacity for short-term memory. These waves are strong enough to penetrate tin foil hats (I tried), and are used in many undisclosed intelligence operations. Only repeated viewings and a strong will can defeat this effect.
Most of the
gang from the first movie is back: John, his wife, the cop from
Family Matters, that obnoxious reporter.
It even takes place during Christmas.
Die
Hard 2 has most of what made the first movie a classic, and that’s really
the main problem.
Great sequels are
generally great because they continue the story while staying faithful, yet
fresh.
Like many underwhelming sequels,
it tries to repeat the formula of the first movie, only on a bigger scale.
Die Hard revolved around terrorists taking over a tower, and now an entire
airport is held hostage.
However, the
direction is clearly not as good as it was in the first movie; it just doesn’t
have the surprise or the atmosphere.
The
visuals and stunts were perfect in
Die Hard, but the iconic jump from the
Nakatomi Tower from the first movie has a transparently cheesy blue screen
effect to compete with.
Many of the memorable features of the last movie’s plot
are absent despite the attempted
déjà vu.
Holly’s role in
Die Hard was very compelling, as she had to deal with the
terrorists face-to-face while concealing her relationship to John.
Now she’s reduced to sitting the adventure
out on one of the planes and eventually tasing the obnoxious reporter when he
gets out of line.
Also, John McClane
does not have a memorable hurdle to compete with his bare feet.
One annoying story arc maintained from the
first movie is the presence of an Incompetent Local Authority (Dennis Franz,
who lacks Paul Gleeson’s odd mystique in such a role).
I mentioned that Roger Ebert gave
Die Hard a negative review as a result
of Paul Gleeson’s character, but seeing as how
Die Hard 2 plays that game too, I don’t understand why he
thought it was an improvement.
But I can't stay mad at him because at least he was one of the few critics who gave Equilibrium a good review.
To the movie’s
credit, it does have a solid villain, even if he lacks Hans Gruber’s charisma.
With his chiseled features and cold demeanor,
William Sadler’s Colonel Stuart definitely looks the part of the villain.
He certainly was the most evil villain in the
series.
After his gang of terrorists
(which includes a rare pre-
Terminator 2
sighting of Robert Patrick) takes over the flight control systems of Dulles
Airport, he purposefully crashes a plane with 230 people on board (including O’Brien
from
Deep Space 9).
Though I don’t particularly like this movie,
I have to give it this scene.
It’s one
of the most effectively vile acts done by a movie antagonist.
Many other aspects of the terrorists’ plan
are clever as well.
Well, color-coding gun magazines for blanks and live rounds would be
if you could do that.
Die Hard 2 has one of the most infamous
firearm inaccuracies in movie history.
This is a scene that makes every gun enthusiast in the world cringe. I speak of course of the ceramic Glock
scene. After John McClane faces off
against a terrorist, he utters this gem to the incompetent head of airport
security:
“That punk pulled a Glock
7 on me, you know what that is?
It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany.
It doesn’t show up on your airport X-Ray
machines here and it costs more than you make in
a month.”
1.
There is no Glock 7. Glock firearms
started with the Glock 17, and the numbers have gone up since. Rumor has it it’s called the Glock 17 because
it was Glock’s 17th patent, but I don’t think that’s substantiated.
2. Porcelain
guns do not exist. Ceramics cannot
handle the pressure that a steel barrel can.
Even if it could, you’d still need metal to make springs and ammo. Also, despite what it may look like in
photos, the slide (er, top half) of a Glock is entirely made out of steel. Anyone can tell just by touching it, which
the people working on the movie obviously must have done.
3. Glocks do not come from Germany. They are Austrian. But then again, it’s not like the Glocks that
the crew had to handle clearly had the word Austria written on them. What makes this so frustrating is that this
goof could have been fixed with one change of a word at the last second.
4. Even
if this somehow magically worked, how would these mythical toiletguns be
invisible to X-Rays?!!!! Don’t you mean
metal detectors?!!!!
5. Also, if my research is to be trusted,
the head of security at an airport would make more than $4,000 a month at the
time this movie was made, eight times the cost of a real-life Glock. This would be a prohibitive cost for any
tactical pistol.
I know Dennis Franz’ character was supposed to be the Incompetent
Local Authority, but I can’t blame him for brushing McClane off after having to
hear that fairy tale. Now I don’t want
to come off as too much of a stickler for technical accuracy in movies. I love stylized, unrealistic gunfights. I’m okay when a movie tweaks reality in order
to be more fun or symbolic. I’m a firm
believer in Rule of Cool. However, this
is not cool, nor is it clever. Cool
would have been thinking of a genuinely imaginative and memorable way for the
terrorists to sneak handguns into an airport.
This was just a lazy cop-out.
What’s worse, it was a lazy cop-out that pandered to a popular anti-gun
myth at the time: that polymer framed pistols could defeat metal
detectors. This just dates the movie in
a way that’s completely pathetic, since I haven’t heard even the most zealous
gun control advocates have trying to play this card for years. It’s like one of those old-timey
superstitions like how people believed that owls were harbingers of evil. Of course, now we know better.
 |
| They are harbingers of David Bowie. |
Since it’s an overall competent, but forgettable, action
sequel, I would have given this movie a 5 or 6 out of 10 star rating if not for
the Glock 7 nonsense.
It seriously cost
the movie at least one star.
I know that
in my review of
Die Hard I said that
you have to forgive flaws like this in a gem, but
Die Hard 2 is not a gem.
Whereas
Die Hard is diamond,
Die Hard 2 is a lump of carbon.
It’s made of the same stuff and it’s a lot
bigger than a diamond, but it’s simply not as good.
