DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER (1990) - ***

The terrific internet film critic The Outlaw Vern made an astute observation some years back of how while Bond uses gadgets, governmental-training, and aristocratic snobbery to save the day, Detective John McClane really is one of us, the "little people" of blue collar U.S.A. because he's a working class guy who uses his scant police knowledge to improvise his way out of surefire deathtraps and try to thwart the enemies.

Look at DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER, where he is trying to save a doomed airplane, he tears some rags, wrap them around some broken pipes, light them up with his cigarette lighter, and bang.....torches so the plane can use it as a ground visual reference. Better yet, when brawling with a henchman, McClane uses an icicle to stab him to death. Plus, he's an incredibly tough Irish-American brave (or stupid, your call) guy who's willing to jump from a helicopter onto the wing of an airliner on take-off, and then take a nasty bump off it this side of Mick Foley.

The DIE HARD movies are a lot like the DIRTY HARRY movies, the 007 franchise, and Donald Westlake's PARKER books in that you know what to expect in each installment: If Harry Callahan is always under suspension, James Bond always the man-whore, Parker's well-laid schemes always problematic in the execution, then Bruce Willis' McClane is always the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time.

You have terrorists, whatever Euro trash, mercenaries or hackers, who lay out a grand scheme and 3-D thinking to outsmart and dominate the hapless authorities, and plan their operation upon their predictable 2-D thinking this side of Khan. They use deception to reveal their true motives, which is revealed in a big plot twist, but by then the underestimated McClane uses his wits and bullets to even out the odds for the good guys. And of course, he always gets the shit beaten out of him.

After the runaway blockbuster success of the original masterpiece DIE HARD, Fox quickly fast-tracked this sequel and as a result, director John McTiernan and Director of Photography Jan De Bont were replaced by Finnish import Renny Harlin and Oliver Wood. I think Harlin is for the most part a hack auteur (and his career shows it), but much like Brett Ratner, he's capable at aping the colorful style of better filmmakers, and delivering a forgettable if serviceable black & white Xerox knock-off narrative, or to use a better analogy, he's the cheap store-brand cereal to McTiernan's Kellogg’s. I would almost call this the best DIE HARD knock-off ever shot, but that honor goes to Andrew Davis' superior UNDER SIEGE.

I do think its odd is how steady and calm Wood's camerawork is, considering how he would later cinematograph the BOURNE movies. Go figure.

What makes DIE HARD 2 the lesser of the franchise is simply because of the approach with McClane, and the story itself.

There is a charm for me in the other DIE HARD movies of how despite being charming with his ballsyness and one-liners, he is the same guy who drove away his wife (DIE HARD), made his co-workers ashamed to be around him despite his heroics (DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE) and is still stuck as a low-paid copper while alienating his daughter (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). He's an alcoholic, chain-smoking bastard.... a likeable one, but only for 2 hours. In real life, would you really want to work or live with such a guy? What really redeems him though is that, who you gonna call when shit hits the fan?

But with DIE HARD 2, this McClane reconciled with his beau, transferred from New York City over to Los Angeles (where she works), apparently looks healthier than we last saw him at the Nakatomi Building, and....this just rings hollow for me. I don't really buy McClane, because the dude is fire & ice. He might as well be a McClane clone like Willis was in THE LAST BOY SCOUT. To put this another way, imagine a DIRTY HARRY movie where Clint Eastwood respected a suspect's civil rights.

Yeah exactly my point.

Aside from that, we have the whole weak villain scheme, where you have a Oliver North-esque Army Colonel (William Sadler) who leads a renegade gang of American Special Ops troops to free a Manuel Noriega-esque Latin American dictator, who's being extradited to USA for drug trafficking, because he harshly engaged the communist guerillas within his lands. Look, the plot device of the other DIE HARD flicks may be simplistic, but you must admit, greed is enough reason for evil men to do evil things. But is an Anti-Moscow ideology enough motivation enough for these soldiers to kill hundreds of their own people?

Maybe that's just me, but maybe the problem is Sadler himself. Mind you, he is cool. He's a great underused actor, and I guess the producers probably wanted an Anti-Hans Gruber for the sequel, but goddamn I wished he had a better scripted role, or at least be as intriguingly different for the whole movie as he was in his introduction when he's nude yoga exercising in his hotel room. Don't be a throwaway Direct-to-DVD nemesis like Timothy Olymphant was in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD.

Then there is the wife subplot. She's on one of the airplanes in the blizzard skies, not able to land because the terrorists have shut down the airport runways, and her scenes trying to deal with this ordeal feels reminds me of the melodramatic AIRPORT disaster flicks which AIRPLANE! so richly mocked. That and you have William Atherton the prick reporter back from the first movie...and who cares?

So yes, you have Willis trying to beat the terrorists so that her plane won't crash and burn from an empty gas tank...and that doesn't bother me really. What bugs me is that you have a great scene when Sadler crashes a British Airways plane, and standing between the burning wreckage and remains of the passengers, Willis seems really lost, tasting failure despite his best efforts, and maybe even unable to beat these pros. Then he picks up a burned doll, and is more determined now to send Sadler to the local morgue.

OK, you say so what? Well, that whole crash sequence is simply throwaway simply to add jeopardy to Willis' mission to save his wife. What if instead there was no wife around? What if Willis does go balls-to-the-wall simply to do the right thing in saving people, like he did in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE? I mean, talk about a great scene wasted.

But perhaps what nearly kills DIE HARD 2 for me is Dennis Franz. Perhaps I'm post-9/11-biased, but wouldn't most such airport security bureaucrats do everything to at least act like they have everything secured and investigated, instead of disbelieving Willis despite everything that happens in DIE HARD 2? I mean, if you want the authorities to doubt the hero, make it credible. Don't waste my time with such lazy "conflict" screenwriting. If I wanted that, I would watch 24.

But despite my whining, I sort of like DIE HARD 2, if only as a decent passable action ticket. Besides, when you have that shot of Willis escaping a bombed jet by using the ejector seat, and he fires up into the air, a mere inch away from our screen, and yells "Oh shiiiiiiiiiiit!" as he rapidly descends.....how can I not help but smile?