If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
If life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? So what happens if life hands you a kumquat
Member since:21.10.2000
Reviews:60
Members who trust:40
There was no way, just no way that this was ever going to be as good as Die Hard, it didn't have to be. Thanks to the success of the original, Die Hard 2 had a ready made audience that was virtually guaranteed to turn up for a second installment. All Fox had to do was to get the picture made and released before the interest wore off and they would almost certainly have a huge hit on their hands.
In the space of under 2 years, Fox had done just that. Walter Wagers novel "58 minutes" was hastily adapted (by Doug Richardson and Steven de Souza) to include John McClane as it's central character, Bruce Willis was enticed back to the role with a paycheque double the size of his original and the producers (Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver) were ready to go, as were the vast majority of the original crew. All that was needed now was a director because John McTiernan was busy doing The Hunt for Red October.
Step forward Renny Harlin, a young director from Finland who had been making a name for himself as a very competent horror director with "Born American" (aka Arctic Heat) and "Prison" - a very creepy and atmospheric shocker which, in turn landed him the job of "A Nightmare on Elm St 4: The Dream Master".
Granted, that was a crap film but it was nevertheless much more successful than it's predecessors and, credit where credit's due he did manage to inject it with a certain degree of style.
It was this style that caught the eye of Joel Silver who is well known for giving young talented film-makers their lucky break and besides, it had worked with John McTiernan so Silver decided to sign him up. But not for Die Hard 2. Although this was their next film to be released, they first collaborated on "The Adventures of Ford Fairlane" which was a bizarre exercise indeed and starred Andrew Dice Clay (who he?..ed) as a "Rock n Roll Detective". This too was a crap film and on it's eventual release it became clear why there had been a year long delay. Not surprisingly, it sank without trace.
Despite this though, Silver still had confidence in Harlin and decided to entrust him with Die Hard 2, and this essentially, is where the film falls down. His obvious talents aside, Renny Harlin is not in the same league as McTiernan when it comes to pacing, acting and cranking up the suspense and as a result Die Hard 2 falls way short of it's predecessor on all three counts.
In terms of storyline, take the skyscraper from the first film and replace with it Dulles International Airport, take the terrorists trying to steal money and replace them with terrorists trying to liberate a South American Dictator and leave everything else exactly as it was before. Make the explosions bigger,the gunfights louder and the body count higher and surely it can't go wrong. Right?
And in all fairness the plan worked. In an action-packed, sequel-stuffed summer facing strong competition from the likes of Total Recall, RoboCop 2, Another 48 Hrs and Back to the Future 3 - Die Hard 2 ultimately came out on top. I, for one was at the front of the (fairly long) queue, and it was all jolly good fun.
10 years later however when we're all a bit more cynical of such fare, Die Hard 2 reveals itself to be remarkably weak in almost every aspect. First of all the mere act of replacing the tower block with the vast expanses of an international airport immediately negates the possibility of any of the claustrophobic tension so evident in the previous film. This time, McClane's character is reduced to a much more conventional superhero who spends most of his screen time yelling at the useless airport authorities before running off to save the day himself. Although Willis' performance is fine, the rest of the cast are pretty nondescript and some of them even stretch to cringe-worthiness. Bill Sadler tries hard as the lead villain Colonel Stuart but sadly he just hasn't got it in him. Bonnie Bedelia doesn't have much to do apart from sit on a plane, Reginald Veljohnson returns for (totally unnecessary) appearance as Al Powell and they even bring back William Atherton as Dick Thornberg who just happens to be on the same flight as McClanes's wife, Holly. Coupled with dozens of script references to the first film this only serves to remind us that we're getting exactly the same recipe as before. But whereas Die Hard set the standard, Die Hard 2 merely follows it and the cliches come thick and fast, they even resort to having McClane pull the charred remains of a childs doll from the wreckage of crashed plane. Oh pur-lease!
Surely the action sequences are good though? Well, they're not bad but even they don't stand up to much scrutiny these days. Things start to sizzle early on with an inventive fight in a luggage loading area and about a third of the way in we get a rip-roaring gunfight where a swat team is ambushed by the terrorists but it's all downhill after that. Yes, a passenger jet crashes to the ground in an enormous fireball, but this jet was supposedly running out of fuel. A potentially nerve-wracking sequence where our hero is trapped on a runway in the path of an oncoming plane is completely ruined by seeing the plane cover the same ground, over and over again. A chase scene on board speeding snowbikes could have been fun but look again at the close-ups in this scene and it becomes painfully obvious that the snowbikes are in fact completely stationary and the actors are just having smoke blown over them. And what about that ridiculous ejector seat sequence? Come on... In the end Die Hard 2 becomes a series of over the top set-pieces linked together with questionable dialogue and accompanied by a music score that is over used to the extent that it becomes noisy and intrusive. Worse still, the entire proceedings are smothered in distinctly fake looking snow!
The fact that Die Hard 2 is the weakest of the trilogy is pretty much unanimous, but viewed today it's surprising just how weak it actually is and perhaps even more so that it was a success at all.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Action/Adventure - Director: The Wachowski Brothers - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Monica Bellucci, Jada Pinkett
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Action/Adventure - Director: Peter Jackson - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring:Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Andy Serkis
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Good review. I saw this along time ago! I cant remember much of it though :9(
dreamstar70 03.02.2001 16:51
Great op and agree with you all the way. PS. you made an enquiry with regards my op of Only Fools & Horses. Well I've updated that review with a full list of episodes & specials along with links to websites etc. Thanks again, DS;o)
pakalang 02.02.2001 11:12
speed? die hard on a bus? really.. i didn't know that.. but, that what makes it great rite? but, Speed 2 is just plain crap, no wonder keanu reeves doesn't want to do it. it just kills the speed franchise(if there's gonna be one!) GOOD op again! u'll be in my circle of trust for a loong time(i'm actually editting it at the moment!) cheers :)
Director Renny Harlin (Cutthroat Island) took the reins of this 1990 sequel, which places ... more
Bruce Willis's New York City cop character in harm's way again with a gaggle of terrorists. This time, Willis awaits his wife's arrival at Dulles Airport in Washi...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
On a snowy Christmas Eve, in the nation's capital, a team of terrorists has seized a major ... more
international airport, and now holds thousands of holiday travellers hostage. The terrorists, a renegade band of crack military commandos led by a murderous rogu...
Director Renny Harlin (Cutthroat Island) took the reins of this 1990 sequel, which places ... more
Bruce Willis's New York City cop character in harm's way again with a gaggle of terrorists. This time, Willis awaits his wife's arrival at Dulles Airport in Washi...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
On a snowy Christmas Eve in the nation's capital a team of terrorists has seized a major ... more
International Airport and now holds thousands of holiday travellers hostage. The terrorists a renegade band of crack military commandos led by a murderous rogue...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
![Die Hard 2: Die Harder [DVD] [1990]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/76559287.jpg "Die Hard 2: Die Harder [DVD] [1990]")
Feb 1st, 2001
(Apr 11th, 2001)
very helpful by (100%):
