Review – Die Hard 2

Movie Title: Die Hard 2

Director: Renny Harlin

Date Released: July 4th, 1990

Date Seen: February 8th, 2013

 

Part 1 – Spoiler Free Quickie Review

The second movie in the Die Hard franchise and probably the weakest.  This one is SO dated (pagers, insane lack of airport security, pagers again, airplane phones, more pagers) and just isn’t as fun to watch as the first film.  The first film I was glued to and laughing and having a great time.  This movie, I kept zoning out, doing something else, etc.  I kept glancing back and seeing some meh shots and just wasn’t impressed.  The villain was no where near as incredible as Alan Rickman’s character in the first movie.  In fact, I’m not entirely sure who you’d call the “main” villain in this one.  Yes, there is clearly a head honcho of the whole operation, but we see very little of him.  Since villains are usually my favorite characters, that was disappointing.

There are still some good gun battles, fights, annoying characters, and insane moments, but it still just didn’t have the lovely charm that the first movie did.

 

Part 2 – In Depth Spoiler Ridden Review/Synopsis

There’s a great synopsis here.

I love some of the things McClane says to himself, just like I did in the last movie.  Especially because sometimes they are exactly what you are thinking yourself.  For example “how can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?!”  “Just get ready to call the Marines…. (I thought they were the army)…. Who gives a fuck!?”

My personal favorite quote though from the whole movie was this one:

“Guess I was wrong about you… guess you’re not really an asshole.” “No, you were right, I’m just your kind of asshole.”

This was the best quote because it could 100% describe my relationship with ALL of my friends.

Marvin the janitor was probably my favorite character.  Because, you know, a large airport such as Dulles would DEFINITELY only have one janitor down in the basement.  But anyway, he was pretty awesome.  His slightly crazy, no idea what is really going on attitude, etc.  Loved him.

Now, watching McClane fly out of the airplane in the ejector seat while the 9 grenades went off in the cockpit below him, was quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.  I laughed so hard at that point.  But in a good way.  Yeah it was insanely ridiculous, but did I care? No.  Another ridiculous death that I loved was the piece of wood stabbed into the guys eye.

 

Overall: 6/10

Watch it because it is one of the Die Hard films, but don’t expect it to be anywhere near as good as the first film.