Writers: Steven E. de Souza, Doug Richardson
Starring: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler
Released: 1990
As the latest Die Hard sequel is out in cinemas, I thought I'd watch the first sequel, to see how it holds up.
You know what it's like: it's Christmas, you're waiting for your wife's flight to arrive at the airport, but a bunch of terrorists show up to liberate an international dictator/drug lord, who is also in custody on a flight to the same airport.
Taking place on Christmas Eve, one year to the day after the first film, Die Hard 2 follows a similar formula; John McClane must save the day by beating the terrorists on his own, he doesn't get help from incompetent cops who don't believe him, his wife is in peril beacuse of the terrorists; etc.
Whereas setting the first film in one enclosed building added a sense of claustrophobia and suspense, setting this film in an airport doesn't really add anything. Furthermore, the continued stupidity of the police (as in the first film) gets very annoying very quickly. The ease with which the "terrorists" liberate the dictator is also pretty ridiculous; I don't think the American government would be quite so slack. A lot of the action in this film is also pretty dull; it's a lot less tactical than in the first film, here it's just a straightforward matter of McClane just going along killing anyone in his way.
On the plus side, the cast are pretty decent for an action film like this, and the film does get better as it goes along. There are also some rather bizarre scenes, which don't really fit the film, but are quite funny, in a "wtf" kind of way; an old woman on a plane telling McClane's wife about her electric stun gun (that she has somehow carried onto the plane), which she killed her pet dog with; there is also a scene near the beginning of the film featuring a naked William Sadler in a hotel room doing some strange exercises and poses.
Overall, this is an average film, and nowhere near as good as its predecessor, though by all accounts, the best of the bad bunch of sequels.
Rating: 2.5/5
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