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Rating: Null/10 (1 January 2014)

I echo most user comments that find this less than the original but still a good bit of fun. The decision to practically repeat the hostage/wife-in- crisis scenario is not a total fluke, because they have shifted a bunch of things to create a strong narrative space: airport instead of tower, horizontal instead of vertical, crowds instead of empty space, the wife above in one of many planes desperately circling the air instead of below. In the first we had those marvelous LA horizons through windows or from the top of the tower, here we have chilly airport runways disappearing in the night.
There is much more action this go around. Interesting is how far our devices have come since. Watch how first we have that whole climax with Willis on the wing of the plane and only after it's over do we return to the situation with the planes having to land. I'm sure Nolan must have seen this and the first dozens of times growing up. Imagine how many more anchors and parallel drift he would create between these two set pieces. Or imagine how many different cameras and cuts Tony Scott would bring to any of them to create visual swirls and vortices, then look at the film and be surprised by how static and clean it is.
Willis had some more acting classes by now whereas in the first he was completely raw, just this charismatic guy pretending he had to save the day.