Die Hard 2
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| Die Hard 2 | |
|---|---|
 Die Hard 2 theatrical poster |
|
| 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 |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Oliver Wood |
| Editing by | Robert A. Ferretti |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 4, 1990 (USA premiere) |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $70,000,000 (est.) |
| Preceded by | Die Hard |
| Followed by | Die Hard: With a Vengeance |
| IMDb profile | |
Die Hard 2, sometimes marketed under the title Die Hard 2: Die Harder, is a 1990 film, the second in the Die Hard series. It stars Bruce Willis, reprising his role as police detective John McClane, and co-stars Bonnie Bedelia (reprising her role as Holly McClane), William Sadler, William Atherton, Dennis Franz, Fred Dalton Thompson and John Amos.
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."
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
The story begins on Christmas Eve, possibly in 1990 (this is implied from McClane's wife saying "we're in the nineties" and from the airplane-showing of the Simpsons episode There's No Disgrace Like Home later on in the movie, which was first broadcast on January 28, 1990) and exactly one year after the Nakatomi Plaza incident. (At one point in the film, McClane mentions that he was in a similar situation with terrorists 'last year'.) We find John McClane, now an L.A. cop after his reconciliation with wife Holly Gennero/McClane, at Dulles Airport near Washington DC, waiting for her to arrive from California (It seems that Holly Gennero's parents live in Washington). 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, the luggage loading compartment. He follows them, and a fight ensues in which McClane kills one of the men, but 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 GLOCK 7, a rare porcelain gun designed to evade metal detectors, something an ordinary thief would not have. (In reality, there is no such weapon of this kind.) 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. 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 Coleman, McClane is ejected from the tower. As he descends in the elevator with Coleman, 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 eject function.
Back at the airport, an 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 the submachine gun he has taken from one of the rogues proves strangely ineffective, and he is stopped by Stuart, who thinks he has finally killed his adversary. McClane checks the gun - and finds that the bullets in the magazine are actually blanks!
McClane returns to the security office at Dulles and reveals to Lorenzo that Grant and Stuart are actually working together; for "emphasis" McClane fires his submachine gun (still loaded with blanks) at Lorenzo when the latter attempts to have him arrested. Finally convinced, Lorenzo mobilizes his police forces to converge on the hangar containing the Boeing 747 that Stuart has requested as an escape vehicle.
However, in an on-going sideplot, Holly McClane has unexpectedly found herself in the same plane as Richard Thornberg, the reporter who had endangered her and John during their previous meeting. Because Thornberg had not made himself any more popular in the meantime (thanks to rather over-zealous reports), Holly was treated as an honored guest by the crew after they have learned of this "relationship". As the terrorists' plans unfold, however, both Holly and Thornberg begin to realize that something is amiss; this cumulates in Thornberg listening into the tower radio transmissions, from which he finally learns about the crisis, and he decides to make a live report from aboard the plane. The crowds in the airport are thrown into panic, which greatly hampers McClane's and Lorenzo's efforts to apprehend Stuart. After happening to witness the report, Holly renders him unconscious with a stun gun carried by the woman sitting next to her.
McClane finds Samantha Coleman 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, but not before saying his catch phrase from the first film, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." The fuel burns right up to the plane, causing it to explode. It also provides a landing light for the other planes, which all set down safely. McClane finds Holly among the passengers, and after Lorenzo gives McClane a Christmas gift by tearing up the parking ticket, Marvin drives the couple off.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Bruce Willis | Lt. John McClane |
| Bonnie Bedelia | Holly McClane |
| William Sadler | Colonel Stuart |
| Dennis Franz | Capt. Carmine Lorenzo |
| Reginald VelJohnson | Sgt. Al Powell |
| William Atherton | Richard Thornburg |
| Franco Nero | Gen. Ramon Esperanza |
| John Amos | Maj. Grant |
| 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.) Some runway scenes were also shot at Alpena County Regional Airport in Alpena, MI.
- 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'.
- In the scene where McClane's wife, Holly, speaks to the old lady besides her, the old lady takes out a stun gun from her purse. While she is doing that, we are also shown the magazine she (the old lady) is reading and it has the poster of a Lethal Weapon movie on it.
- MaximOnline.com named the airplane crash in the film as #2 on its list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes."
- When the film was shown at a cinema in Pretoria South Africa, a light aeroplane was hoisted onto the roof of a local multiplex as promotion for the film. This advert backfired as the sight of the aeroplane caused serious car accidents near the cinema.
[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, McClane calls his wife back on an airphone after being paged by her, whereas most of the plot of the movie could have been avoided had the tower done the same thing. In reality, however, it is impossible to make calls to airphones.
- 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. McClane lands, there is a shot of the pilot pulling back four throttle controls. But the plane which Mrs. McClane 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.
- At one point, McClane emerges from a maintenance tunnel through something like a large sidewalk grating in the middle of a runway. But no runway at a U.S. commercial airport would have a grating like that in the middle of it. And even if one did, the grating would have to be strong enough to support the weight of a plane weighing up to one million pounds and therefore would be very heavy—McClane would be unlikely to be able to push open such a grating. (See FAA Advisory Circular 150/5300-13, "Airport Design.")
- Military transport planes like the one Esperanza is flying are not equipped with ejection seats as depicted when McClane ejects himself before the grenades explode.
- Using the 'Marker Beacons' to transmit to the planes 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.
- After the first shoot out scene in the movie, Willis takes the gun off the soldiers body. He tells the Captain that it is a Glock 7, a German made porcelain gun. There is no such thing as a Glock 7. All Glocks are made from polymer composite and steel, not porcelain. In addition, the polymer composite frame is impregnated with steel, further rendering a real Glock incapable of passing metal detectors. Furthermore, Glock is an Austrian company, not German. This mistake is probably based on the urban legend that the Glock 21 (one of the first handguns to be made mostly of polycarbonate) could get past a metal detector.
[edit] External links
- "Die Hard 2" Clip Plane crash scene
[edit] References
| The Die Hard films | |
|---|---|
| Die Hard | Die Hard 2 | Die Hard with a Vengeance | Live Free or Die Hard | |
| Characters | |
| Heroes: John McClane | Sgt. Al Powell | Zeus Carver | Matt Foster | |
| Villains: Hans Gruber | Colonel Stuart | Simon Gruber | |
| Recurring: Holly Gennero McClane | Richard Thornburg | |
| Crew | |
| Directors: John McTiernan | Renny Harlin | Len Wiseman | |
| Producers: Joel Silver | Lawrence Gordon | John McTiernan | Bruce Willis | |
| Writers: Steven E. de Souza | Doug Richardson | Jonathan Hensleigh | |
| Video games | |
| Die Hard | Die Hard Arcade | Die Hard Trilogy | Die Hard Trilogy 2 | Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza | Die Hard: Vendetta | |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Fox Plaza | Glock 7 | Nothing Lasts Forever |
