The 1980s action blockbuster
movie was dominated by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone
and Jean-Claude Van Damme (among others) – muscle-bound one-man armies that
killed scores of bad guys with guns, brawn and cheesy one-liners. Along came
Bruce Willis in 1988 with Die Hard,
tweaking the formula by playing a guy perpetually in way over his head, tired,
hurt, and using his brains as much if not more than his brawn to defeat the bad
guys. Audiences were drawn to his tough yet vulnerable wisecracking character
John McClane. The movie was a massive success and the inevitable sequel
followed. Die Hard 2: Die Harder
(1990) didn’t stray too far from the first one (why bother messing with a good
thing?) except to amp up the stunts, the body count and the explosions all the
way to the bank, easily outgrossing the original.
“Merry Christmas, pal!” are
the words uttered early on in the movie as John McClane’s day starts off on a
sour note and will only get worse as his car is ticketed and towed despite his
good-humored protests to a cop that clearly doesn’t care about his problems.
It’s Christmas Eve and McClane is at Washington Dulles International Airport to
pick up his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). This lack of cooperation from local
law enforcement is nothing new for McClane who faced plenty of it in Die Hard and it is also foreshadows the
interference he’ll experience later on in this movie.
Meanwhile, General Ramon
Esperanza (Franco Nero), a drug lord and dictator of Val Verde by way of Manuel
Noriega, is scheduled to be extradited to the United States to stand trial for
drug trafficking. However, rogue U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart
(William Sadler) and a team of mercenaries take control of the airport
effectively shutting them down, which leaves several planes, including the one
with Holly on it, circling and running low on fuel. Stuart plans to let
Esperanza’s plane land and then demands a 747 be prepped for take-off at which
point they will use it to rescue the drug lord.
Naturally, McClane receives a
ton of grief from head of airport police Captain Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz)
who doesn’t like some hot dog gloryhound cop treading all over his turf. Dennis
Franz is at his profane best, dropping F-bombs with gusto. Watching him and
Willis trade insults inserts some much welcome levity amidst the bombastic
action sequences. Here’s a memorable exchange early on:
Lorenzo: “Yeah, I know all
about you and that Nakatomi thing in L.A. But just ‘cos the T.V. thinks you’re
hot shit don’t make it so. Look, you’re in my little pond, now and I am the big
fish that runs it. So you cap some low-life. Fine. I’ll send your fucking
captain in L.A. a fucking commendation. Now, in the meantime you get the hell
out of my office before I get you thrown out of my goddamn airport.”
McClane: “Hey Carmine, let me
ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first: the lead in your
ass or the shit in your brains?”
Franz is that rare breed of
actor that can casually insert profanity in his dialogue and make it flow like
poetry. I almost imagine him flying in his buddy David Mamet on the studio’s
dime to write his dialogue. It has that vibe to it. Of course, McClane spends
the rest of the movie making him looking stupid.
This being a sequel, the
novelty of the original has worn off and McClane seems a little more invincible
in this one, but Bruce Willis does what he can to make his character relatable
and have flaws, like when he is unable to redirect a plane that the bad guys
intentionally crash. We empathize with his frustration at being unable to save
the plane and his dejected, defeated face says it all. The movie does its job
(maybe a little too well) of making Stuart and his men so evil that you want to
see McClane take them all out.
William Sadler plays yet
another in a long line of villains with his rogue colonel being a peculiar
badass so comfortable with his own body that he practices his martial arts in
the nude, which also happens to show off his impressively sculpted physique. It
certainly is a memorable introduction to his character. Sadler plays Stuart as
ruthless man not above disciplining failure by pointing a loaded gun at a
subordinate’s face or, in a particularly nasty move, cause a plane full of
innocent people to crash and burn on a runway.
William Atherton and Bonnie
Bedelia return as a smug journalist and McClane’s wife respectively, spending
the entire movie trapped on an airplane together trading barbs. Among the
mercenaries keep your eyes peeled for a young Robert Patrick (T2), a clean-shaven Mark Boone Jr. (Tree’s Lounge), John Leguizamo (Carlito’s Way) and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Chicago Hope).
Much like in the first Die Hard, McClane demonstrates an
uncanny knack for improvisation as evident in the first action sequence when he
takes on two mercenary thugs in the baggage handling section. After he loses
his gun, McClane uses a golf club and then a bicycle to take out one baddie and
chase off the other. What I also like is that we see the air traffic controllers
problem solve their way around Stuart and his men through good ol’ fashioned
ingenuity.
Doug Richardson and Steven E.de Souza’s screenplay has just enough nods to the first movie to let us know
that the filmmakers are aware that Die
Hard 2 is basically a variation on the original only bigger and louder,
symbolized by the iconic money shot (that is equal parts ridiculous and cool) of
McClane ejecting out of a plane as it is exploding and him saying at one point,
“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” The movie ups the ante in
many respects as he faces even greater odds and is put in even greater danger.
In 1987, Walter Wager’s book 58 Minutes, a thriller that takes place
in an airport, was published and within a year he received a phone call from
movie producer Lawrence Gordon over at 20th Century Fox who wanted
to option the film rights. As Die Hard
was becoming a box office success, the studio had yet to announce the sequel
but Gordon knew that it was only a matter of time. To avoid getting solicited
by every agent and writer in Hollywood, he hired up and coming screenwriter
Doug Richardson in 1989 to adapt Wager’s book with the intention of using it as
the basis for Die Hard 2 but not
telling the studio until they approached him with the project. The studio’s
then-new production chief Joe Roth ordered a sequel for the summer of 1990 with
principal photography to start right away in order to meet that deadline.
Wager agreed to the sell the
film rights to Gordon and months went by with limited updates until one day he
was told that his book was being filmed in a month and was now called Die Hard 2! He was understandably
surprised and told that Richardson’s script was being rewritten by Steven de
Souza who had worked on Die Hard.
Towards the end of principal
photography on The Adventures of Ford
Fairlane (1990), the movie’s producer Joel Silver gave director Renny Harlin a script entitled 58 Minutes
and told him it was going to be Die Hard
2. Harlin read it, liked it and asked Silver, “’Oh, who’s directing it?’
And he said ‘You.’ And I said, ‘Really? Like, next year?’ He said, ‘Well, next
week, basically.’” Within a week Harlin was filming Die Hard 2 and editing Fairlane
at night and on weekends.
The shoot was hardly an easy
one. The movie was set during Christmas and was intended to be filmed at an
airport in Denver but when the production arrived the weather was too warm.
They spent the next few months chasing the snow, moving from one location to
another, including stints in Washington, Michigan and the Canadian border. The
production ultimately went to Los Angeles and used three refrigerated
soundstages rebuilding the entire church, which was originally shot in Denver.
Finally, a few more wide shots were done at Lake Tahoe, the last place they
could find snow.
Die Hard 2 received mostly positive reviews from
critics at the time. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four
stars and wrote, “Because Die Hard 2
is so skillfully constructed and well-directed, it develops a momentum that
carries it past several credibility gaps that might have capsized a lesser
film.” In her review for The New York
Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “It will surprise no one who saw the first Die Hard that the heart and soul of the
new film is Bruce Willis, who this time is even better. Mr. Willis, with his
self-deprecating jokes and his ability to smoke a cigarette while carrying a
machine gun, remains a completely wrong-headed choice for the role of a noble,
self-sacrificing hero. That’s why he’s so good.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote,
“With flawless technical collaboration, Harlin gets airport control towers and
dark New England churches to look rich and brooding for his mostly nighttime
action scenes; his fireballs detonate with hell’s own roar, his stunts may be
hilarious but they’re show-stoppers, and against all odds, a few of his actors
manage a little humanity in all the din.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote,
“Though it has more holes than a cheese grater, the screenplay by Steven E. de
Souza of Die Hard and Doug Richardson
is persuasive braggadocio, a fast-churning, bloodthirsty canticle of mayhem.”
Finally, in her review for the Philadelphia
Inquirer, Carrie Rickey wrote, “Like its predecessor, it is an action movie
with a sense of humor – and a human component. It also is a gripping,
white-knuckle thriller that keeps you at the edge of your seat and nerves.”
Watching Die Hard 2 again is a potent reminder of a time when Willis still
cared about acting and didn’t phone it in like he’s done in the last two movies
in the franchise that don’t deserve the Die
Hard moniker. Most fans agree that they should have stopped with Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), which
was a fitting way to end things on a high note but as long as they make money
and Willis is up for it there will be another installment in this tired franchise.
SOURCES
Sullivan, Mike. “Die Hard’s Secret Sequel.” Creative
Screenwriting. May 27, 2014.
Wager, Walter. “What
Hollywood Did to His Novel…And He Loved It.” Los Angeles Times. July 28,
1990.
