The magic is missing from this one...

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2012)

The original "Die Hard" was one of those special movies where Hollywood really got it right. It never quite felt like a big dumb summer blockbuster action flick, it was just so much fun and, while the movie as a whole was a bit implausible, there were very few specific moments where the typical viewer would be annoyed at the blatant lack of realism, completely unbelievable characters and lack of suspense and enjoyability. The first movie was great because, even though you knew in the back of your mind the hero would win, he kept getting put in such bad situations that you really wondered how he'd pull it off. It was a highly suspenseful movie, and the wonderful score certainly helped with that. What also helped was that the movie's three-way conflict - McLain vs. Terrorists vs. Dumb cops - was entertaining on all sides, with the terrorists being led by the charismatically evil Hans and the dumb cops being given a human face and made likable by the twinkie-loving Sgt. Al Powell.
Die Hard 2 has a lot of superficial nods to the original movie - cameos, jokes about "why does this keep happening to us?" - but it doesn't actually replay the parts that worked so well and kept the movie moving swiftly. In this installment, McLain is in the airport and only in real peril when he runs into the terrorists, who have taken over air traffic control and are not allowing any planes to land and using their 90 minutes of remaining fuel as a timebomb threat (of course, perhaps the fatal flaw of the movie is how little sense this makes, given the fact that there are plenty of viable airports within 90 minutes flight of D.C. that could be used for emergency landings).
"Die Harder" is thus solo McLain versus the terrorists even though he's surrounded by cops (all the ones who show up are, of course, incompetent or corrupt though). In the first movie there was a good reason why the cops - as mediocre as they were - couldn't help. In the second movie, we're just asked to believe that they never think of things like going out onto the airfield to see what's going on as a mystery plane lands. The one saving grace is Dennis Franz's hilarious performance as the police captain who hates McLain's guts, it's over the top, but fun to watch due to Franz's brilliant comic acting.
All of that said, this movie isn't truly bad, it's just not the action movie magic of its predecessor. It's fine as a big dumb 90s action movie to watch on cable TV one Sunday afternoon, as I just did, but I won't be grabbing the DVD unless it's in the mega-bargain bin.