Die Hard 2
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| Die Hard 2 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Produced by | Charles Gordon Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver |
| Written by | Walter Wager (novel) Steven E. de Souza Doug Richardson |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Bonnie Bedelia William Atherton Reginald VelJohnson Franco Nero William Sadler John Amos |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 4, 1990 (USA premiere) |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $70,000,000 (est.) |
| Preceded by | Die Hard |
| Followed by | Die Hard: With a Vengeance |
| IMDb profile | |
Die Hard 2, the second Die Hard movie, was directed by Renny Harlin and released on Wednesday, July 4, 1990. It stars Bruce Willis, reprising his role as police detective John McClane, and co-stars Bonnie Bedelia (reprising her role as Mrs. McClane), William Sadler, William Atherton, Dennis Franz, Fred Dalton Thompson and John Amos. It is sometimes erroneously listed as Die Hard 2: Die Harder, conflating the official on screen title and marketing phrase used in poster art and elsewhere, including the label on the original VHS tape.
McClane is waiting for his wife to land at Washington's Dulles Airport when terrorists take over. He must stop the terrorists before his wife's plane, circling the airport, runs out of fuel and crashes.
The movie is based on a novel by Walter Wager entitled 58 minutes. The novel has the same premise: a cop must stop terrorists who take an airport hostage while his wife's plane circles overhead. He has 58 minutes to do so before the plane crashes.
Die Hard 2 was followed by Die Hard: With a Vengeance in 1995.
While lacking the huge impact of the original, the movie was a box-office success and received a reasonably positive critical reception. Roger Ebert, while noting the not-insubstantial plot credibility problems with the movie, described it as "terrific entertainment."
Taglines:
- "Die Harder."
- "They say lightning never strikes twice... They were wrong"
- "John McClane is back in the wrong place at the wrong time!"
- "Last time, it blew you through the back wall of the theater. This time, it will blow you sky high!"
- "Yippee Ki Yay, All over again!"
- "I hate it when I'm right."
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[edit] Synopsis
On Christmas (perhaps one year after the events of the first film), we find John McClane at Dulles Airport near Washington DC, waiting for his wife, Holly, to arrive from California. After arguing with airport police about towing his in-laws' car, John hangs out at an airport lounge. He becomes suspicious when he see a group of men, dressed in Army fatigues, pass a package between them and disappear into a restricted area. He follows them and a gunfight ensues. McClane kills one of the men, the other escapes. McClane demands to talk to the head of airport security, the hotheaded Captain Lorenzo, who dismisses McClane's report as "punks stealing luggage." However, McClane strongly disagrees considering one of the assailants was wielding a rare ceramic design gun designed to evade metal detectors, something an ordinary thief would not have.
McClane storms off and investigates on his own. He takes fingerprints from the corpse of the mercenary he killed and faxes them to Al Powell (his police officer ally from the first film) who runs them through several databases, including Interpol. The soldier's record indicates that he is dead, a deliberately misstated fact to give him a covert identity. McClane suspects that the man is part of a plot to seize control of the airport.
With weather conditions worsening, a rogue Army officer, Colonel Stuart, plans to hold the approaching planes and their passengers and crew hostage until he can secure a despotic Central American general, Esperanza, who is arriving at airport after his arrest in his own country. (Esperanza is meant to represent the Panamanian drug lord, Manuel Noriega.) Stuart's team infiltrated the airport to plant a transmitter to monitor all communications of arrivals and landings of aircraft at Dulles. Stuart has also set up his operational base in a nearby church and has tapped directly into Dulles' traffic control tower .
McClane sneaks into the tower and speaks directly to the head of air traffic control, Trudeau, about the man he killed earlier. At that moment, Stuart commences his operation and takes control of the airport. Despite his efforts, and because of the appearance of a reporter, Samantha Cole, McClane is ejected from the tower. As he descends in the elevator with Cole, she tips him about Stuart, who’d she’d seen earlier. McClane makes the connection; Stuart was forced from his position by Congress on possible corruption grounds and now seeks revenge. McClane slips out of the elevator through the ceiling and finds himself in the underground maintenance area of the airport.
Trudeau and his crew contact the approaching planes and inform the cabin crews that they will be unable to land (they do not mention that terrorists have taken control of the airport and its communications and navigation systems) and must circle the airport. Trudeau’s communications director, Barnes, takes a team to a new antenna outpost to restore communication with the planes. He and Lorenzo’s SWAT team are attacked by a detachment of Stuart’s men. Barnes is about to be killed when McClane appears and kills the rest of Stuart’s men in a gun battle. (Before being forced out of the control tower, McClane overheard the location of the antenna array.) After a hostile conversation via two-way radio, Stuart retaliates for the deaths of his crew by crashing a British flight, killing everyone on board despite McClane's desperate attempts to avert the mass murder.
McClane returns to the underground maintenance level. The maintenance worker, Marvin, who previously helped him locate the antenna tower, has a two-way radio dropped by one of Stuart’s crew. The radio chatter tells McClane that Esperanza’s plane is about to arrive. (Esperanza has killed the transport crew and now controls the plane himself.) McClane rushes to the landing site and apprehends Esperanza, although briefly, until Stuart and his men show up to retrieve the general themselves. McClane hides in the cockpit of Esperanza’s plane. Stuart and his crew first empty their submachine guns into the plane, and then toss several grenades inside. McClane straps himself into the pilot’s ejector seat and escapes the blast by engaging the escape function.
Back at the airport, a Army Special Forces unit arrives. Their leader, Major Grant, once served with Stuart and claims to know his tactics. Barnes surmises that Stuart’s command post is near the airport. He and McClane find the church where Stuart is hiding. Shortly after McClane kills one of Stuart’s guards, Grant shows up and a gunfight ensues. Stuart, his men, and Esperanza escape on snowmobiles. McClane chases after them but is stopped by Stuart, who thinks he has finally killed his adversary.
McClane returns to the security office at Dulles and reveals to Lorenzo that Grant and Stuart are actually working together (McClane was using a gun taken from a rogue armyman, which leads to him realising they were using blanks in the fight against the Special Forces). Lorenzo mobilizes his police forces to converge on the hangar containing the Boeing 747 that Stuart has requested as an escape vehicle. The crowds in the airport have been thrown into panic due to a news report from Richard Thornburg aboard the same plane that McClane’s wife is a passenger on. (His partner has audio receiving equipment that can tap into the tower communications.) Holly renders him unconscious with a stun gun carried by the woman sitting next to her.
McClane finds Samantha Cole outside the airport entrance. He hitches a ride in her network’s helicopter and heads for Stuart’s plane which is taxiing for takeoff. He manages to jump to the wing and finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with Major Grant. After a brief struggle, Grant is sucked through one of the plane’s engines and killed. Stuart takes up the fight and kicks McClane off the wing. As he falls, McClane opens the fuel dump on the engine. As he watches the plane take off he uses his cigarette lighter to ignite the fuel. The fuel burns right up to the plane, causing it to explode. It also provides a landing light for the other planes. McClane finds Holly among the passengers.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Bruce Willis | John McClane |
| Bonnie Bedelia | Holly McClane |
| William Atherton | Richard Thornburg |
| William Sadler | Col. Stuart |
| Reginald VelJohnson | Sgt. Al Powell |
| Franco Nero | Gen. Ramon Esperanza |
| John Amos | Maj. Grant |
| Dennis Franz | Capt. Carmine Lorenzo |
| Art Evans | Leslie Barnes |
| Fred Dalton Thompson | Trudeau |
| Tom Bower | Marvin |
| Sheila McCarthy | Samantha 'Sam' Coleman |
| Don Harvey | Garber |
| Tony Ganios | Baker |
| Peter Nelson | Thompson |
[edit] Trivia
- Die Hard 2 was the first movie to have a digitally-manipulated matte painting. It was used for the last scene, which took place on a runway.[1]
- The movie was not filmed at Dulles, but at many other locations. Many of the airport terminal shots were from LAX in Los Angeles, other shots were from many runways of other airports, such as of Denver's now-closed Stapleton International Airport. This was done mainly because the producers needed an area that had frequent and consistent snowfall, which Denver has. (Ironically, according to the special edition DVD features, Denver suffered from an unseasonably unsnowy winter that year; in at least one scene, the crew had to make do with fake snow, including "snow" made from painted cornflakes.)
- Passengers watch an early episode of The Simpsons entitled "There's No Disgrace Like Home" on one of the airplanes.
- The movie references Val Verde, a fictional country used by Fox in other films including Commando also written by Steven E. de Souza.
- In the TV version, McClane's final "Yippee ki-yay motherfucker" is redubbed, with "Mr. Falcon" even though there is no character named "Mr. Falcon" mentioned at any point in the film. (Gen. Ramon Esperanza only uses the name "Falcon" when he talks to Col. Stuart over the WalkieTalkie). In some versions, it is redubbed with the somewhat more sensible (all things considered) 'My friend'.
[edit] Errors
- One key plot point is that planes would continue to circle an airport waiting to land until they were unable to divert elsewhere. Under real-life flight regulations, planes must always contain enough fuel to go to their destination or a pre-designated alternate airfield, plus additional fuel to allow for en-route delays. In the densely populated northeastern United States, there are a considerable number of airfields with instrument-landing facilities that would have been available for landing.
- Another plot point involves the terrorists being the only ones able to communicate to the airliners, after the terrorists have crippled the airport's communication systems. In real life, aviation AM band radios are common, and commercial airliners have numerous other communication systems to talk to their corporate headquarters, etc. Also, in the Washington D.C. area, there are several airports including (Andrews Air Force Base and Langley Air Force Base within a few minutes' flight time that could communicate with and land commercial airliners in an emergency. (In one of the control tower scenes it is mentioned that "National just shut down", referring to Reagan National, then called Washington National.)
- Onboard the airplane, an old lady tells Mrs. McClane that she has a stun gun, and proves it by showing it to her, even though stun guns have been banned on all planes since their inception.
- During the movie, the tower calls a number of the circling aircraft, apprising them of what's going on. It is impossible to call an airphone.
- In a few shots of the reporter, Dick Thornberg, when he is on the phone with his news station, he is holding the phone upside-down.
- After the airplane with Mrs. McLane lands, there is a shot of the pilot pulling back four throttle controls. But the plane which Mrs. McLane is riding in is a Lockheed TriStar, with only three engines.
- The Windsor Airlines plane which is deliberately crashed into the runway by the terrorists is reported to be "as dry as a martini." However, when the aircraft crashes, almost all of it explodes into a fierce fire. Simply, this is impossible, and planes have crashed and not exploded because they have run out of fuel, such as the Avianca Boeing 707 which crashed in New York.
- The payphones in the airport have the Pacific Bell logo on them. In real life, the phone region in Dulles would be in the Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) region. The reason for this is because it is filmed in Los Angeles at LAX, in which it is in the Pacific Bell region, rather than in the real Dulles Airport.
- Military transport planes like the one Esperanza is flying are not equipped with ejection seats as depicted when Willis ejects himself before the grenades explode.
In the film the terrorists use blank ammunition to simulate a fire fight. They do this by simply changing clips from live ammo (the magazines with red tape around them) to blank ammo (the magazines with blue tape around them) and vice versa. This is impossible to do without a BFA (Blank Firing Attachment) or BFB (Blank Firing Barrel) attached to the weapon because without the actual projectile found in live ammo, there is not enough gas push back to re-cock the weapon, thereby making it single shot only - not fully automatic as is shown in the film.
At the start of the film McClane calls Holly on the aircraft phone. Although impossible in real life, later in the movie when they lose radio communications with the aircraft, no one (including McClane) thinks to call using the aircraft phones that are obviously unaffected. Although they use the 'Marker Beacons' to transmit to the planes, this is very unlikely. Beacons such as the VOR and NDB (navigational beacons) have the capacity to transmit voice and they are powerful and omni-directional. The marker beacon on the other hand is a weak, pencil thin beam that points straight up and lets an aircraft know when they have flown over it. Consequently, only one aircraft at a time would receive the transmissions when they were directly over the source, and only for a few seconds.
[edit] See also
- GLOCK 7, a fictional gun referenced in this movie.
[edit] References
| The Die Hard films |
|---|
| Die Hard | Die Hard 2 | Die Hard with a Vengeance | Live Free or Die Hard |
| Characters |
| John McClane | Hans Gruber | Colonel Stuart | Simon Gruber | Zeus Carver |
| Video games |
| Die Hard | Die Hard Arcade | Die Hard Trilogy | Die Hard Trilogy 2 | Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza | Die Hard: Vendetta |
