DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER
A film review by Chris J. Hillery
Copyright 1990 Chris J. Hillery
Finally, a movie which restores my faith in sequels. After the disjointed disappointment of ROBOCOP 2 and the utter idiocy of GREMLINS 2, I must say I went into DIE HARDER with a few reservations. Happily, they were mostly proved unfounded.
Now, make no mistakes: the original DIE HARD was the superior movie of the two. It was a fabulous thriller and a well planned action movie, with plenty of amazing stunt work and expensive (!) scenery- chewing; a pretty hard act to follow. However, DIE HARD 2 makes a valiant effort, and with considerable success. It certainly matches up in action and violence; this was almost certainly a more expensive movie, and the action, stunt work, and blowing-up-of-expensive-objects were all at least on par with the first. I would go so far as to say that, as an action movie, this was superior to the original. Where it falls a bit short is in the suspense end of the line. DIE HARD 2 has few edge-of-your seat thrills, little "omigosh, what's going to happen now?"; indeed, there's little room for this between the continuous stream of finding out what's going to happen (mostly "boom!"s). The main cause for this is that, while the first movie was placed in a skyscraper, with close proximity between McClane and the Bad Guys (tm), no escape and the claustrophobic tension brought about by that, DIE HARD 2 is set in a big, open airport -- and the Bad Guys weren't even there, for the most part, instead having their base of operations in a nearby church. Because of this, there's few times we either are tensely expecting someone to jump out or are surprised by someone jumping out, etc....
Despite this, DIE HARD 2 succeeds well in being a non-stop action movie. It doesn't fall into the common trap, of which even DIE HARD 1 was somewhat guilty, of taking too long to get going; the action is nearly from the word go. Also, the plotline, while necessarily a bit credibility-stretching (these terrorists were *really* prepared for anything) and over-done, was not distractingly so; it followed its own lead, all apparent inconsistencies were well-explained, and while several turns were pretty obvious, there were a couple true surprise twists stuck in to keep things interesting. On the other hand, character development was a bit lax in this sequel. McClane was again surprising and interesting, but even he was somewhat flat; the wry humor which was so common in the first movie was notably absent. Also, the other central characters were, in the main, pretty one-dimensional, and maybe even a little cliched. I must say, though, I'm only now thinking of these problems; it's a tribute to the amount of sheer action in this movie that those flaws simply didn't occur to me while I was actually watching the thing (I guess that makes them not really flaws, doesn't it?). DIE HARD 2 tries to blow you away with action, and it does that exceedingly well.
Principally because I prefer a good thriller, I can't rate this one as well as the first, but nonetheless it is far and away the best movie I've seen yet this summer (although I have yet to see DICK TRACY, TOTAL RECALL or ANOTHER 48 HOURS). If you enjoy a good slug/blow-up fest, this is the movie to see (definitely more so than ROBOCOP 2); and, if having seen a few too many rotten flops, you need something to convince you that a sequel to a good movie *can* be made and made well, here's your choice. Do note, though, that this really is not a movie to take the whole family to. While many of the deaths involved seeing how many ways one can blow up airplanes, there were a good number of unique and grisly ways to finish off your favorite enemy employed and plenty of bodies filled with lead; and these people are every bit as foul-mouthed as in the first.
DIE HARD 2, Rated R: violence, profanity.
Ratings IMHO, 0-100 scale: Compare to: DIE HARD
Action: 95 Action: 85
Suspense: 50 Suspense: 100
Plot: 79 Plot: 92
Characterization: 25 Characterization: 90
Overall: 82 [A-, 3 1/2 stars] Overall: 96 [A+, 4 stars]
Please note that the "Overall" rating is not designed to be an average or any sort of summary of the preceding ratings, but rather a true rating of how good the movie was taken as a whole. With four categories one can't fully rate all aspects of a movie, nor should they all be weighted equally; also, as is the case with DIE HARD, a movie can sometimes be more (or, in other cases, less) than the sum of its parts. In the case of DIE HARD 2, the movie was exactly the sum of its parts; fortunately, most of the parts were pretty strong.
-- -- Ceej ceej@pawl.rpi.edu gmry@mts.rpi.edu aka Chris Hillery
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