Severely unequal sequel!

Rating: 3/10 (19 June 2009)

DIE HARD 2 is a prime example that, in terms of film-making, in general, you can't top the original. Resistance is essentially futile! Hindsight and retrospect is a son of a gun! There have been many cases where I was immediately fooled by a sequel that had more packed in it (longer, bigger, more characters, more effects, more action, etc.) thinking with something other than my common sense! When I first saw DIE HARD 2 back in 1990 (the year it came out), I thought:
"Oh, it's not confined to that building and is instead in a big airport (Dulles), so it's got to be better!
"McClane gets to move around more, doesn't have to walk around barefoot, gets to interact with a lot of people, so it will be less uncomfortable."
"The action can be more spread out and is not restrictive. So it's got to be better."
Wrong, wrong, and wrong!
Again, with hindsight and repeated viewing, DIE HARD 2 continually gets downgraded by me as what is wrong with most Hollywood action movies, especially nowadays.
What I realize is that part of the brilliance of the original DIE HARD was it's claustrophobic nature and that by limiting the action to that one skyscraper, it allows everything to be more personal, centrally located, and focused. You had to have everything happen in that one building, so you couldn't cheat or fool the audience. By design, the filmmakers had to come up with original ideas. In a situation like DIE HARD 2, there is action HERE, THERE, and EVERYWHERE to the point of just a bunch of the same action scenes, each with non-quotable, stupid dialogue and one-liners. The action in DIE HARD 2 is not unique, nor are any of the situations scary or tense, as they were in DIE HARD.
Our hero is once again John McClane (played by the reliable action hero Bruce Willis, but this time in a thankless situation) and as previously stated, he is at Dulles Airport in D.C. waiting his wife Holly's (Bonnie Bedelia again) arriving plane so they can meet her parents for Christmas. A bad snowstorm has caused so that even planes at nearby airports must re-route to Dulles. This time, as opposed to in the original DIE HARD, these terrorists are actual terrorists, a group of U.S. military expatriates who plan to seize control of Dulles and force them to have the plane of a political prisoner routed to a special runway. This group is led by Col. Stuart (played by William Sadler). This is another huge problem with DIE HARD 2. The main villain is not effective. While in DIE HARD, Hans Gruber was truly diabolical, smart, charming, and relentless, Stuart in DIE HARD 2 is pretty much just a stock villain who has an eternal scowl on his face with no distinguishing characteristics. Very monotone character. Also, Stuart strangely doesn't seem to be fazed or surprised about McClane's involvement in trying to stop him, which I find unrealistic.
Another problem is that whereas DIE HARD had a core of memorable supporting characters (Holly, Hans, Karl, Powell, Robinson, Thornburg, etc.) each with some character believability and depth, DIE HARD 2 is populated with virtually all annoying characters (the airport personnel led by Fred Dalton Thompson and Dennis Franz are spectacularly idiotic; at least in DIE HARD, even though Robinson wasn't too bright, he had legitimate reason to believe that McClane might not be on the up and up; these airport guys had no excuse, so why waste the whole 2 hours arguing with him!). Also, I found most of the more minor characters like the flight attendants on Holly's plane, the female news reporter following McClane around like his pet, that creepy drunk guy working in the underground part of the airport, etc. all annoying.
Then you have John Amos (playing an Army major and a former colleague of Col. Stuart's) and his military squad pop in to save the day at the last minute, but again, it is not exciting or tense at all. In fact, with all the action in DIE HARD 2, none of it is thrilling, just by-the-numbers fare: fake-looking fights and machine guns going off all over the place, but without the style, flair, and, dare I say, "realism" of DIE HARD. The action situations in the original were more sparse, believable, and well-staged.
But the biggest offense of DIE HARD 2 is the cringe-inducing dialogue. It is really bad. One of the reasons many of the characters come off so bland, monotone, and annoying. I mean, it is unintentionally laughable. ALL characters are a victim to it. And finally, amazingly, although it came out only 2 years later, this sequel seems way more dated than the original. In fact, the original doesn't seem dated at all to me. DIE HARD 2 is just a mindless action flick.