Die Hard 2

BACK COVER SYNOPSIS: High above the city of LA a team of terrorists has seized a building, taken hostages, and declared war. But one man has managed to escape detection... an off-duty cop. He's alone... tired... and the only chance anyone has. Bruce Willis stars as New York City Detective John McClane, newly arrived in Los Angeles to spend the Christmas holiday with his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia). But as McClane waits for his wife's office party to break-up, terrorists seize control of the building. While the terrorist leader, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his savage henchman (Alexander Godunov) round up hostages, McClane slips away unnoticed. Armed with only a service revolver and his cunning, McClane launches his own one-man war. A crackling thriller from beginning to end, DIE HARD explodes with heartstopping suspense.

FILM REVIEW: My first experience in watching the Die Hard films was actually with this sequel. Although it can't really recapture the magic or the novelty of the first groundbreaking film, "Die Hard 2" still manages to pull considerable punch and is a worthy follow-up. New director, Renny Harlin, wisely chooses to change the scenario which drives this film completely, shifting the setting to Washington Dulles Airport, with the bad guys this time being a group of ex-army mercenaries who have been hired to ensure the safe passage of drug lord General Esperanza (Franco Nero) from the airport. In some ways, the premise is perhaps not as believable as the first film, but give me an action film that doesn't suspend disbelief in some way.
William Sadler plays Colonel Stuart, a more down-to-Earth but no less ruthless villain who with his team of mercenaries manage to seize control of Washington Dulles International Airport at Christmas. At the same time, John McClane (Bruce Willis) arrives at the airport to pick up his wife who is due to land within the next hour. As you would expect, the terrorists take control and McClane goes to work, trying to figure out what's going on. McClane is frustrated by a stubborn airport police chief Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) who doesn't believe that anything bad is happening. But when Colonel Stuart announces himself to the control tower and proves his power by impersonating the control tower and crashes one of the planes circling the airport, McClane realises he's in the same situation he's been in before: "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice!" he exclaims.
While this film lacks the claustrophobic intensity of the first film, it more than makes up for it with a much bigger canvas and some incredible visuals. The scene where Stuart guides an airplane in to the ground is thrilling, as are many of the action sequences which cover several sections of the airport. As with the first film, "Die Hard 2" makes no bones about showing lots of blood, breaking-bones and some nasty violence although just like the first film, there's a cartoon-like quality to it all which downplays the severity of it.
One aspect that this sequel retains from the first film is a build up of suspense and tension between the characters. This is no more evident than with the character of Major Grant (John Amos) who at first, with his crack anti-terrorist army team have been called in to help, and in several scenes, appears to be one of the good guys. He actually helps McClane at one point; McLane says, "I guess I was wrong about you. You're not such an asshole after all." Grant replies, "Oh, you were right. I'm just you're kind of asshole." Then seemingly unexpectedly, he actually turns out to be on Colonel Stuart's side. This two-sided nature of the character allows for a lot more intrigue to be injected in to the story, particularly as once Grant is revealed to be a bad guy, the character of Chief Lorenzo suddenly becomes a very useful ally for McClane.
One let-down is the quite over-the-top and unbelievable ending. When McClane finally got to Hans Gruber in the first film, it was very simple and thrilling - he just shoots him and he falls out the window. In this film, McClane (after engaging in a fist fight on the wing of a 747) pulls the fuel cap off the plane, lights his cigarette lighter and lights the fuel which catches up to the plane and makes it explode in mid-air. It's spectacular to watch but it's WAY over the top and in many ways detracts from the rest of the film which is a bit more down-to-Earth by comparison.
On a side-note, it's interesting to see Robert Patrick in a minor role prior to his role as the T-1000 in Terminator 2.
"Die Hard 2" is an exciting, entertaining action film that although doesn't match the great heights of the first Die Hard still manages to pack quite a punch.

TECHNICAL REVIEW: The video transfer is for the most part quite decent, and is an improvement over the first Die Hard film, although the picture is still a bit soft at times. The colour is quite good, and the picture is clear. The audio soundtrack is reasonable as well, and again is an improvement over the first film with the surround environment and clarity of dialogue and effects being faithfully represented. This DVD also offers a very good 5.1 DTS soundtrack. Overall, a decent transfer.

EXTRAS REVIEW: The extras on this disc are a big improvement from the first Die Hard DVD with the collection focusing more on the film itself. Director Renny Harlin provides an excellent and informative audio commentary on the first disc and serves as the best making-of featurette on this DVD. There's a 23 minute promotional documentary on the making of the film that is not too bad if you look past all the Fox promo rubbish. There's also a short four minute promotional featurette which covers the same ground as the documentary. There are a number of featurettes, including two very good interviews with Renny Harlin and William Sadler who plays the main villain. There's a short featurette on the snowmobile chase sequence, as well as the baggage handling sequence that opens the film. There's a visual effects breakdown of certain sequences and a storyboard of the Annex skywalk conveyor belt action scene. We also get deleted scenes, trailers and subtitles (Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, English for the hearing impaired). This is a very good collection of extras that complement the main film very well, offerring some nice insights in to the production.

BOTTOM LINE: Worth having in the collection.

FILM RATING: 8/10 -- EXTRAS RATING: 7.5/10 -- OVERALL DVD RATING: 8/10 

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net