An arguably superior sequel

Rating: 9/10 (20 February 2013)

Die Hard/Predator really set the bar for action movies in the late 80s (oddly I never rated Lethal Weapon despite being its' target audience and being a big fan of The Last Boy Scout). Following it up was always going to be a tough job, you couldn't have him credibly trapped again and skyscrapers had essentially used up all their possibilities but I think they succeeded admirably on all counts.
The Good? Great villain in the shape of William Sandler, quite daring for them to opt for a rightwing military bad guy rather than some foreign menace as we see in 1 and 3. Fred Thompson demonstrates the presence and air of authority which so benefited him in his political career. The annexe skywalk shootout is a classic and bears much re-watching (everyone notice a pre-Terminator 2 Robert Patrick as the mercenary's team leader? And that the SWAT team actually manage to kill one of the ambushers before McClane's arrival). The twist is a killer, I remember hearing Grant and Stewart talk on the radio and thinking "That sounds like a codeword" but it was still a massive shock when it happened, people gave a collective gasp in the cinema. But not as loudly as they cheered in the climax when he delivers his lighter line. Ultimately this is the story of the ordinary Joe taking on the high tech/superbly trained/painstakingly prepared bad guys and triumphing through his grit and ingenuity. Bruce Willis is excellent as the everyman, when he asks himself 'Oh John, what are you doing on the wing of this plane?' that's exactly what you were thinking.
The Bad? The great Bonnie Bedelia is somewhat wasted and her final line extremely cheesy. You can't really get a Glock through airport scanners, it may have a polymer frame but its' insides are filled with metal. In real life the airport only had to contact the military and use their radar network to guide the planes down. You can't fire blanks from an assault rifle/submachine-gun by just swapping the magazines, you have to put an adapter device on the end of the muzzle because blanks don't produce enough recoil by themselves to cycle the bolt. How are the bad guys planning to escape, they've no hostages by the time they get onto the 747 so what's to stop the air force blowing them out of the air? Once they've kicked the bad guys out of the church why can't they just repair the cuts they've made to the cables and use control towers' equipment to land the planes?
That said it's a great film and whilst Die Hard 3 isn't bad they really should have stopped at 2.