| Die Hard 2: Die Harder | |
|---|---|
 Film Poster |
|
| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Produced by | Charles Gordon Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver Associate Producer: Suzanne Todd Co-Producer: Steve Perry Line Producer: James Herbert Executive Producer: Lloyd Levin Michael Levy |
| Written by | Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza Doug Richardson Novel: Walter Wager Characters: Roderick Thorp |
| Starring | Bruce Willis William Sadler Bonnie Bedelia Dennis Franz John Amos Franco Nero Reginald VelJohnson |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Oliver Wood |
| Editing by | Stuart Baird Robert A. Ferretti |
| Studio | 20th Century Fox Silver Pictures Gordon Company |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 4, 1990 |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Spanish |
| Budget | $70,000,000 (estimated) |
| Gross revenue | $117,540,947 (domestic) $239,540,947 (worldwide) |
| Preceded by | Die Hard |
| Followed by | Die Hard with a Vengeance |
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 returns as Sgt. Al Powell who was in the first film.
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. Roderick Thorp (who wrote the novel Nothing Lasts Forever upon which the first Die Hard film was based) receives credit for creating "certain original characters" although his name is misspelled onscreen as "Roderick Thorpe."
The film was followed by Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
Contents |
One year after the events of Die Hard, John McClane (Bruce Willis), is waiting on Christmas Eve at Washington Dulles International Airport for his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) to arrive from Los Angeles, spots two men dressed in army fatigues and carrying a package. Following them into the baggage area, McClane ends up in a fight, killing one of them while the other escapes. Learning the dead man is a mercenary who was thought to be killed in action, McClane believes something is about to happen.
Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) and other former members of his unit, set up a base in a small church near the airport. They take over air traffic control systems, stating that they want to rescue Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), 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 control.
Dulles communications director Leslie Barnes (Art Evans) heads to the unfinished Annex Skywalk with a SWAT team to establish communications with the planes. Stuart's men ambush them, killing the SWAT team. Before they can kill Barnes, McClane bursts in and kills Stuart's men. Stuart responds by using the instrument landing system to crash a plane, killing everyone on board.
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 returns to the airport to find an Army Special Forces team led by Major Grant (Amos) has arrived. Barnes and McClane discover where the mercenaries are located and 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 does not work. He realizes the mercenaries and Special Forces were using blanks in their guns and are working together.
McClane contacts the airport police to send out officers to intercept the plane. Reporter Richard Thornberg (Atherton), on the same flight as Holly, phones in a sensational take on what is happening at Dulles, leading to panic in the airport, and preventing the officers from reaching the plane. 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 sucked into the engine. Stuart kicks McClane off the plane, but McClane manages to open the fuel hatch. He uses a cigarette lighter to ignite the trail of leaking fuel, destroying the plane and killing Stuart. The other planes, circling in the air, use the lighted trail to land, and Holly and McClane are reunited.
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."[2] 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 "Greatest Movie Plane Crashes".[3]
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.[4]
Michael Kamen, the music composer for the first Die Hard movie, also composed the score for Die Hard 2. Kamen reprises several music cues from his Die Hard score (most notably during the action sequences), as well as adapating Jean Sibelius's "Finlandia" (in a similar fashion to his incorporation of Beethoven's 9th Symphony into the score of the first Die Hard). The end credits of the film begin with the Christmas song "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (performed by Vaughn Monroe), as they did in Die Hard.
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Die Hard 2 | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Produced by | Charles Gordon Lawrence Gordon Joel Silver |
| Written by | Novel: Walter Wager Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza Doug Richardson |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Bonnie Bedelia William Atherton Dennis Franz Reginald VelJohnson Franco Nero William Sadler John Amos Fred Thompson |
| Music by | Michael Kamen |
| Cinematography | Oliver Wood |
| Editing by | Robert A. Ferretti |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | July 4, 1990 |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Country | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $70,000,000 (est.) |
| Gross revenue | Domestic: $117,540,947 Worldwide: $239,540,947 |
| Preceded by | Die Hard |
| Followed by | Die Hard with a Vengeance |
| IMDb profile | |
Die Hard 2 (also called Die Hard 2: Die Harder) is an American action movie starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, and William Sadler. It was released on the Fourth of July weekend in 1990.
This movie begins on Christmas Eve 1990.[1] John McClane is at the Washington Dulles Interntional Airport, waiting for his wife Holly's plane to land, and his car gets towed away. He argues with the airport security for a little bit before going inside. There, he sees a couple of men handing off a package to each other and does not like it. He goes to tell the airport police, but stops because the same man who towed his car is there. Instead, McClane enters the baggage area, where one of the men pulls a Glock gun and starts firing. During the gun fight, one man, named Oswald Cochrane, is killed when he goes through a baggage sorting machine. The other man manages to escape.
McClane tells the chief head of police, a man named Carmine Lorenzo, but Lorenzo thinks that these men are only "punks stealing luggage." McClane goes out there and gets fingerprints from the dead man. He faxes them to his friend Al Powell in Los Angeles, telling Powell to run the fingerprints through police records to find out who this person is. Powell does so and then gives McClane the man's record. The record says that Cochrane died two years ago in 1988 but is somehow still alive today. McClane believes he is a professional mercenary.
McClane goes to up to the airport tower and tells them that someone is about to "fuck with the airport." He says that he does not know what they will do. Lorenzo forces him out.
A man named Colonel Stuart then puts his plan into action. He cuts off all electronics inside the airport tower and takes control of all their items – the instrument that lands the planes and all radios. He then says that, in a couple of hours, a cargo plane will be landing. The plane has a man named Ramon Esperanza. Esperanza is the drug lord of the fictional country of Val Verde. The United States Justice Department is going to put him in jail. Stuart tells them that he wants a fully-fueled Boeing 747 to be put on the runway and says that nobody should touch the Esperanza's plane or try to restore the landing instruments.
McClane finds a janitor named Marvin. McClane has Marvin tell him where to go. Just before McClane was forced out, he heard that the air traffic controllers wanted to head to the Annex Skywalk, a new branch of the airport, to restore their systems. Lorenzo sends his SWAT team and the communications director, Leslie Barnes, to head to the Skywalk. As McClane expected, Stuart's men attack the SWAT team. They kill all five members and are about to kill Barnes when McClane comes through a vent shaft and kills them all.
Moments later, the antenna outpost explodes. It was a trap. Stuart then calls in to tell them that it was stupid to try to restore their systems. He then picks a flight that is low on fuel. He resets the ground level of the landing system to be 200 feet below, so that when the plane is at 200 feet they think they're at 400 feet. He then crashes the plane into the ground, killing all of the passengers on board.
Afterwards, a Special Forces unit from the United States Army comes in, led by Major Grant. They take a meeting in the pilot's briefing room. McClane gets Marvin to try to tell him where the room is. During the search, McClane finds a two-way radio that one of Stuart's men dropped. He listens in and finds out that Esperanza has taken over the plane and shot the two pilots. The plane is out of control and he needs to land right away. Stuart tells him to land on the nearest runway.
McClane gets out there first and punches him before Stuart's men show up. They trap him in the cockpit and throw grenades. McClane escapes by strapping up in the pilot's ejection seat and blasting off as the grenades explode.
Barnes listens to McClane's story. Because Stuart's men showed up so fast, Barnes thinks that they must be close by. They find the church where they are basing their operations and send in the Army Special Forces out there to fight. During the gun battle, McClane sees that Stuart's men are escaping on snowmobiles. He shoots one guy with a gun that he stole, takes his mobile, and chases after them. However his gun does not work and his mobile gets shot and he falls down. He opens his gun and finds that there were rubber bullets in there. He realizes that Stuart and the special forces are working together.
McClane comes back to the airport. He says that they are working together. Lorezno does not believe him until McClane fires the gun to show that they are rubber bullets. Meanwhile, the people at the airport are panicked. A reporter named Richard Thornberg has broadcast that terrorists have taken over the airport. As a result, Lorenzo and McClane cannot get out there fast enough.
Instead, McClane gets a ride with Samantha Coleman and her news helicopter. The 747 has already left the hanger. McClane gets the pilot to drop him over the wing of the 747. Esperanza, who is flying the plane, sees McClane. Grant goes out there fights but is sucked into the engine of the plane. McClane finds the fuel hatch. When Stuart kicks McClane off the plane, McClane manages to open it and the plane starts losing fuel. McClane then takes his cigarette lighter and ignites the fuel and the plane blows up.
The fire trail of the plane allows the planes flying overhead to see the ground. Holly lands safely and the two of them come back together. The movie ends with Marvin driving them off.
  | IMDb entry on ''Die Hard 2: Die Harder'' - Die Hard 2 (1990) |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
