"How does the same sh** happen to the same guy twice?!"

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2008)

So John is LAPD now, which I suppose means he wasn't able to convince his wife to come back to New York with him and instead decided to relocate to California to be with her. I like that this gives his character more of a human element, and also adds to his humanity by portraying him not as an infallible movie-hero but a very real man with needs and emotions.
This is the same character that was saw in the original Die Hard, who wanted his wife to move back to New York with him and was also physically affected by his wounds throughout the course of the movie. A lesser film would have him getting shot and injured left and right, but the wounds would just be forgotten about as the movie progressed. This happens all the time (The Hunted, with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro springs to mind).
Unfortunately, this time around, while John is still effectively portrayed as a loving family man, the bad guys are robotic action movie clichés. Maybe it was Robert Patrick's machine- like performance here that got him the role in Terminator 2? If nothing else, it's interesting to me to see blood come out of him when he gets shot
This time around, terrorists have taken over an airport and are threatening to crash passenger jets if their demands are not met. Immediately, my head is filling with red flags, even though I am not what you would call and airport expert.
It seems that the terrorists have seized control of the electrical system of the airport, blacking out the runway so that the plans can't see to land. I know that passenger jets are designed so that an airport can take control of them and land the plane, and that the pilots don't really have to do the actual landing itself. But does that mean that the pilots are helpless in the cockpit during landing? I didn't know that, and frankly I doubt it. But then again, reporters are able to gain easy access to the airport's control tower in the movie, so clearly there are a lot of liberties taken with reality for the purposes of the plot.
At any rate, John's wife is on one of the jets awaiting runway lights and permission to land, which means the bad guys are going to have a bad time with one particular guy.
My biggest problem with the movie is that the premise is just so weak to me. It just seems so ridiculous to think that just a handful of people, even 20 years ago, could take over the control tower and render an entire sky full of passenger jets completely helpless.
We are asked to believe that not only are the pilots helpless during landing, but also during a holding pattern. If they have no control of the plane, why do we have air traffic controllers? What is the point of talking to the pilots if the airport controls the plane anyway?
But if you can believe that, then maybe it will be easier for you to accept that fully loaded passenger planes would sit in a holding pattern indefinitely until they literally run out of fuel and fall from the sky rather than diverting to a nearby airport. And it also might not seem so strange to you when one air traffic controller tells the pilots of one plane "Good luck" after telling them to continue their holding pattern even though they're running low on fuel. Good luck??
Overall it's still a good action movie, John is still cool as hell but unfortunately the story is unimaginative and is told through generic action sequences, many of which make little to no sense. At one point, for example, a bad guy is sucked into one of the plane's engines (I would have given a spoiler warning, but you had to already know that that would happen somewhere in this movie) and doesn't damage it at all.
But in the movie's defense, at least the generic action fits well with the flow of the film. Obviously no flame could ever catch up to an accelerating 747, but it does make for a tense scene, and even a bit of what can only be called comic relief when the trail of fire provides runway lights to guide the rest of the planes in the holding pattern to a safe landing. How good could this movie really have been had it not had the airport on fire at the end?
I love the pilots believable dialogue as they begin landing ("If they can do it, so can we!"), and although the movie contains one of the most unrealistic climaxes that I've ever seen in a mainstream action film, it is a passable entry in the Die Hard series. Sadly, it's the worst one