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Die Hard 2, promotionally known as Die Hard 2: Die Harder,[1] is a 1990 action film, and the first sequel in the Die Hard series. It was directed by Renny Harlin, and stars Bruce Willis, reprising his role 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) Thornburg, Dennis Franz, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Amos, and Reginald VelJohnson who makes a cameo appearance as Sgt. Al Powell. 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. 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. The film was followed by Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995, and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.
PlotJohn McClane, while waiting on Christmas Eve at Dulles International Airport waiting for his wife Holly to arrive, spots a group of men dressed in army fatigues and passing a package between them. Following two of them into the baggage area, McClane ends up in a fistfight, killing one of them. McClane, believing that some scheme is about to happen, reports the incident to airport security, lead by Captain Carmine Lorenzo, but his concerns are ignored. McClane contacts LAPD Officier Al Powell who helps him to identify the corpse as a hired mercenary, securing McClane's suspicions. Meanwhile, U.S. Army Colonel Stuart and his men have secured a small church near the airport, and sets up a base of operations. They are able to take over control of the airport's air traffic control, preventing the tower from communicating with incoming planes. Stuart demands that they be allowed to rescue Ramon Esperanza, a drug lord and dictator of a third-world country being flown in to the United States for trial, as well as having a Boeing 747 prepared for Ramon, Stuart, and his men to leave the country. Stuart insists that any unauthorized attempt to communicate with the planes would be met with dire consequences. In the control tower, Leslie Barnes, communications director for the airport, comes up with the idea of using a radio in the unfinished airport annex; Barnes along with a SWAT team move towards the annex. McClane overhears this, and with the help of Marvin the janitor, tries to get to the annex before Barnes, expecting there to be a trap. McClane's intuition is correct; the SWAT team is shot down, but McClane is able to arrive in time to save Barnes' life. Before Barnes can get to the radio tower, Stuart blows it up and then fulfills his promise by altering the altitude reading on one of the arriving plane's Instrument Landing System, taking the guise of the Dulles' control tower to give the plane permission to land. Despite McClane's efforts to warn off the plane on the ground, the plane, unable to see the ground due to poor visibility, crashes into the runway, killing all on board. Shortly thereafter, Esperanza's plane arrives, and Stuart and his men arrive on the airport to safely extract him. McClane manages to apprehend Esperanza before Stuart arrives, but finds himself outnumbered; he manages to just escape the destruction of the plane by Stuart and his men. McClane returns to the airport terminal to find that an Army Special Forces team from the counter-terrorist unit called "Blue Light", the predecesor to Delta Force led by Major Grant has arrived, and with help from Barnes, deduce the likely location where the mercenaries are operating from. McClane travels with the Special Forces as they discover the church; when they are discovered, the mercenaries rig the equipment with explosives, preventing it from being used by others. A firefight ensues between Stuart's men and the Special Forces, but the mercenaries manage to escape on snowmobiles. Taking up pursuit, McClane discovers that both the mercenaries and Special Forces were using blank ammunition in their guns, concluding that Grant is working with Stuart. He reports his findings to Lorenzo, who doesn't accept it as fact and threatens to arrest McClane, who fires off his blank-loaded submachine gun at Lorenzo to make his point. Finally convinced, Lorenzo sends off his forces to secure the escape plane. Meanwhile, Barnes has been able to juryrig the outer markers of the airport to broadcast to the planes to explain the situation. On board Holly's plane, reporter Richard Thornberg overhears the radio chatter, and uses the plane's phone to report the news to a local television station; when the report airs, the crowds at Dulles begin to panic. Holly, who also watches the newsreel on her plane, shocks Thornburg with a fellow passenger's stun gun in mid-broadcast. McClane is able to get onto the wing of Stuart's plane with the help of a local news team covering the story, and attempts to prevent it from taking off by wedging open the flaps. Stuart and Major Grant go onto the wing to remove the blockage; Grant is sucked into one of the plane's engines and killed, but Stuart easily thrashes McClane. But before being thrown off the wing, McClane manages to open the fuel tanks on the wing, spilling a trail of jet fuel along the runway. Just as the plane takes off, McClane ignites the fuel trail, causing the plane to explode, killing everyone on board. The planes overhead, including Holly's, use the flaming trail as their landing lights, and all the planes are able to land safely. McClane reunites with Holly, and are driven off together by Marvin. Cast
ReceptionWhile 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." Joel Siegel of Good Morning America stated that the film is "the best of the blockbusters" of 1990. 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. MaximOnline.com named the British plane crash as #2 on their list of "Most Horrific Movie Plane Crashes" [2]. Production and promotionUnlike Die Hard, which is relatively faithful to its source material (Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever), Die Hard 2 has little in common with its source, Walter Wager's novel 58 Minutes. The only element to survive the transition from novel to film is the basic premise: a New York cop faces terrorists holding an airport's in-flight planes hostage in an effort to free political prisoners. No scenes from the film are taken directly from the novel. 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.[3] The movie was not filmed at Dulles, but at many other locations. Many of the airport terminal shots were from LAX in Los Angeles (one of the payphones has a "Pacific Bell" logo). Other scenes were shot in the terminal baggage claim drive through at 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. When the film was shown at a cinema in Pretoria, South Africa, a light airplane was hoisted onto the roof of a local multiplex as promotion for the film. 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 not only carry enough fuel to go to their destination or a pre-designated alternate airfield, but must also accommodate 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 crippling all of the airport's communication systems, so the airline pilots can only communicate with the terrorists. 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 Washington National.) The scene where the Instrument Landing System glide slope is re-calibrated to be 200 feet lower than the ground level is impossible in real life. An aircraft flies towards the glide slope transmitter which is situated on the ground. The aircraft gets its height information from its own altimeter and radar altimeter. References
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Categories: 1990 films | 1990s action films | Action thriller films | American films | Aviation films | Christmas films | English-language films | Films based on thriller novels | Sequel films | 20th Century Fox films | Silver Pictures films | Films shot anamorphically | Terrorism in fiction | Films directed by Renny Harlin | Films set in Virginia CommentsNo comments have been added. |
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