Die Hard 2 (Renny Harlin, 1990)

In my Die Hard post last month, I urged all of us to get past the question of whether Die Hard is or is not a Christmas movie (it is and it isn't) and asked people to instead consider whether Die Hard is a slasher movie and, by extension, whether action movies are slasher movie subgenres in which the action hero is a version of both the slasher movie killer and final girl. Let's see how these questions apply to Die Hard 2.

Die Hard 2, like its predecessor, takes place during the Christmas season, and, also like its predecessor, was released in theaters in the summer (July 4, 1990), but Die Hard 2 looks a lot Christmas-ier than Die Hard. The setting changes from a skyscraper office party in sunny Los Angeles to Dulles Airport in snowy Washington, D.C., during a blizzard. The airport is covered in Christmas decorations, the luggage carousel is full of wrapped gifts, everyone wears winter clothing, eggnog is mentioned, and one of the action sequences involves a snowmobile chase. It's a freakin' winter wonderland over here. The Christmas spirit permeates Die Hard 2. On the other hand, most of the plot has nothing to do with Christmas, other than the holiday season making the airport and flight schedules busier. They could've done this same story on Thanksgiving or spring break or at any airport in any city that was hosting the Super Bowl or the Olympics.

My conclusion: Die Hard 2 is a Christmas movie, and Die Hard 2 is not a Christmas movie. Embrace the contradiction. You accept that this movie takes place at Dulles in D.C. even though it was filmed at various airports, military bases, and studio sets in Colorado, Michigan, and California. You accept that the terrorists shutting down the airport's communication system leaves the planes in the air helpless even though they could get information from hundreds of other nearby radio signals. You accept that John McClane faces a crazy madcap terrorist Christmas season showdown for the second time in two years in two completely different cities. Give that same leap of faith to a Christmas movie that is not a Christmas movie but is a Christmas movie but isn't a Christmas movie. Do it.

Admittedly, my slasher movie hypothesis is pretty shaky when it comes to Die Hard 2, despite John McClane (Bruce Willis) stabbing one of the baddies through the eye with an icicle and (accidentally) crushing another one. McClane does a hell of a lot less skulking around in this one, he gets a lot more help, and most of the villains are dispatched en masse in gun battles and explosions. Not very slasher-y, am I right? My larger point stands, but Die Hard 2 is not a shining example of action movie as bizarro-world slasher.

It is a shining example of the big-budget '80s/'90s Hollywood action movie. Despite repeating the first film's formula with a much stupider terrorist plot, the sequel is almost as fun. The action scenes are legitimately suspenseful and exciting, the returning actors retain their chemistry and charm, and director Renny Harlin (taking over for the first and third installment's John McTiernan, who was busy making The Hunt for Red October) has a real gift for handling big scenes in large locations with hundreds of individual moving parts. (I also love the scenes in all the weird airport nooks and crannies us passengers never get to see.) Especially in the hustling, bustling airport scenes, Harlin shows masterful skill at gracefully controlling a busy, chaotic visual space. It's thrilling stuff, enhanced by the shots of the empty, still expanse of the darkened runways after the landings are delayed.

Alan Rickman and his crew of Eurotrash hair-metal muscleheads are sorely missed, replaced in this installment with a gang of character-acting heavy hitters who don't get enough personality-defining moments, except for William Sadler's naked martial arts workout while watching the news. You know a guy's a coldblooded psycho in an '80s or early '90s movie when you get a scene of him exercising in the nude. While Die Hard's villains were thieves with vague ties to Communist revolutionaries, Die Harder's bad boys are an anti-Commie far-right ex-military militia planning to save their newly arrested anti-Commie drug lord boss from the plane transporting him to Dulles. Ah, Hollywood, always having it both ways.

Leading the operation is Stuart (the aforementioned Sadler, of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Trespass, various Tales from the Crypt movies and TV episodes, and The Shawshank Redemption fame), and his crew includes Don Harvey (The Untouchables), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2), and a blink twice and you'll miss him John Leguizamo. '60s and '70s spaghetti western and giallo star Franco Nero, who's worked with almost everyone from Fassbinder to Tarantino, plays the drug kingpin Esperanza. The returning cast besides Willis includes Bonnie Bedelia (this time given a much better role with zippier dialogue despite being stuck on a plane), William Atherton (also stuck on the plane) and Sheila McCarthy (their journalist characters are both working in D.C. now in one of many plausible coincidences), and, in a cameo, Reginald VelJohnson. What about Argyle, man? Joining the cast as McClane's allies, foils, secret enemies, or eventual allies are Dennis Franz, John Amos, Art Evans, Fred Thompson, and Tom Bower. This is a solid group of character actors who have been in a dizzying array of high-quality (and low-quality) projects, and they get a lot more to do than Sadler and his boys.

Sadly, Die Hard 2 really drops the ball in the zinger department. John McClane in the first movie was loaded with action-movie quips that hit the sweet spot between dad-joke stupidity and screenwriter cleverness, and Willis knew how to deliver the goods. The quips in Die Hard 2 are so lame, tired, try-hard, and dumb-bad (as opposed to dumb-good) that even Willis can't get some of them over. Not even the return of "yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker" can save it. The best McClane dialogue is the simplest. When he launches himself out of an ejector seat into mid-air as a plane explodes underneath him, he drops a well-timed, humorously delivered "oh shiiiiittt." When "oh, shit" is your funniest quip, a dialogue punch-up is sorely needed. It's a minor complaint overall, but a missed opportunity to capture more of the first movie's flavor.

Die Hard 2 was director Harlin's first big Hollywood job and second hit. After making short films and TV commercials in his native Finland, he moved to the U.S. and debuted with low-budget action thriller Born American, followed by low-budget horror movie Prison (reviewed on this site many years ago) and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. His other credits include The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (starring the insane lineup of Andrew "Dice" Clay, Wayne Newton, Gilbert Gottfried, Priscilla Presley, Morris Day, Vince Neil, David Patrick Kelly, Ed O'Neill, Robert Englund, Sheila E, Pamela Adlon, Kurt Loder, and Tone Loc), Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight with his then-wife Geena Davis, Deep Blue Sea, 12 Rounds (with John Cena), and The Strangers trilogy.