Die Hard 2, also known as Die Hard 2: Die Harder,[1] is a 1990 action film, and the second installment of the Die Hard series. It was directed by Renny Harlin, and stars Bruce Willis as John McClane. The film co-stars Bonnie Bedelia (reprising her role as Holly McClane), William Sadler, William Atherton reprising his role as Richard (Dick) Thornberg, Franco Nero, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, John Amos, and Reginald VelJohnson who makes a cameo appearance as Sgt. Al Powell.
Set once again on Christmas Eve, McClane is waiting for his wife to land at Washington Dulles International Airport when terrorists take over the air traffic control system. He must stop the terrorists before his wife's plane and several other incoming flights that are circling the airport run out of fuel and crash. During the night, McClane must also contend with airport police, maintenance workers, and a military commander that doesn't want his assistance.
The screenplay was written by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson adapted from the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager. The novel has the same premise but differs slightly: 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. The film was followed by Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
Plot summary
John McClane (Willis), while waiting on Christmas Eve at Washington Dulles International Airport for his wife Holly to arrive from Los Angeles, spots two men dressed in army fatigues and passing a package between them. Following them into the baggage area, McClane ends up in a fight, killing one of them, but the other escapes. Discovering that one of the two men is a mercenary who was thought to be KIA some time ago, McClane believes that something is about to happen.
Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart and other former members of his unit, operating out of a small church near the airport, set up their operations. They take control of the air traffic and state that they want to rescue Ramon Esperanza, a drug lord and dictator of a South American country named Val Verde, who is flying in for a trial. They demand a Boeing 747 so they can escape to another country and warn the Dulles controllers not to try to restore their systems.
Despite warnings, the Dulles controllers and communications director Leslie Barnes head out to the unfinished Annexe Skywalk with the airport police SWAT team to try to establish communication with the planes. However, Stuart already has men there waiting for them, who kill the SWAT team and are about to kill Barnes when McClane bursts in and kills Stuart's men. In response, Stuart uses the Instrument landing system to recalibrate the ground level to be 200 feet minus sea level. The pilots of a Windsor Airlines plane believe they are 200 feet higher than they actually are and crash the plane, killing all the passengers on board, despite McClane's attempts to try to save them.
A two-way radio dropped by one of Stuart's men tips McClane off that Esperanza is landing. He gets there before Stuart's men, but Stuart traps him in the cabin and throws grenades into the cockpit. McClane escapes through the ejection seat. McClane comes back to the airport to find an Army Special Forces team, led by a Major Grant, have arrived. Barnes and McClane discover where the mercenaries are operating and radio in to tell Grant and his team to raid it. However, the mercenaries escape on snowmobiles. McClane pursues them, but finds that the gun he picked up doesn't work. He realizes that both the mercenaries and Special Forces were using blank ammunition in their guns during the firefight and that they were working together.
McClane gets the airport police to send out officers to intercept the plane. Reporter Richard Thornberg, on the same flight as Holly, phones in a very sensational take on what's happening at Dulles, leading to panic amongst the public in the airport, and the officers cannot reach the plane in time. McClane hitches a ride on a news helicopter, which drops him off on the wing of the plane. Grant comes out to fight, but ends up being sucked into the engine, killing him. Stuart kicks McClane off the plane, but not before McClane manages to open the fuel hatch. He then takes a cigarette lighter and lights the trail of leaking fuel, blowing the plane up. The other planes, circling in the air, use the lighted trail to land, and Holly and McClane are joyfully reunited in the final scene of the movie.
Cast
Reception
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." Joel Siegel of Good Morning America stated that the film is "the best of the blockbusters" of 1990. It garnered a "fresh" 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film had a budget of $70,000,000 and had a wide release in 2,507 theaters, making $21.7 million its opening weekend. Die Hard 2 has domestically made $117.5 million and $239.5 million worldwide, almost doubling that of the first movie.
Maxim named the plane crash as #2 on their list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes".[2]
Production and promotion
Unlike Die Hard, which is relatively faithful to its source material (Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever), Die Hard 2 has little in common with its source, Walter Wager's novel 58 Minutes. The only element to survive the transition from novel to film is the basic premise: a New York cop faces terrorists holding an airport's in-flight planes hostage in an effort to free political prisoners. No scenes from the film are taken directly from the novel. The film references the title of the novel through dialogue when Colonel Stuart first speaks to the Dulles Control Tower: "A plane will be landing at this airport in 58 minutes, as FM1, Foreign Military One..."
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.[3]
The movie was not filmed at Dulles, but at many other locations. Many of the airport terminal shots were from LAX in Los Angeles (one of the payphones has a "Pacific Bell" logo). Other scenes were shot in the terminal baggage claim drive through at 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. (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.) Some runway scenes were also shot at Alpena County Regional Airport in Alpena, Michigan.
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