Die Hard 2 (also called Die Hard 2: Die Harder) is an American action thriller movie starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, and William Sadler.  It was released on the Fourth of July weekend in 1990. It is the second movie in the Die Hard series.

Plot
This movie begins on Christmas Eve 1990. John McClane is at the Washington Dulles International Airport, waiting for his wife Holly's plane to land, and his car gets towed away. He argues with the airport security for a little bit before going inside.  There, he sees a couple of men handing off a package to each other and does not like it.  He goes to tell the airport police, but stops because the same man who towed his car is there. Instead, McClane enters the baggage area, where one of the men pulls a Glock gun and starts firing. During the gun fight, one man, named Oswald Cochrane, is killed when he goes through a baggage sorting machine. The other man manages to escape.

McClane tells the chief head of police, a man named Carmine Lorenzo, but Lorenzo thinks that these men are only "punks stealing luggage."  McClane goes out there and gets fingerprints from the dead man. He faxes them to his friend Al Powell in Los Angeles, telling Powell to run the fingerprints through police records to find out who this person is. Powell does so and then gives McClane the man's record. The record says that Cochrane died two years ago in 1988 but is somehow still alive today. McClane believes he is a professional mercenary.

McClane goes to up to the airport tower and tells them that someone is about to "fuck with the airport."  He says that he does not know what they will do. Lorenzo forces him out.

A man named Colonel Stuart then puts his plan into action. He cuts off all electronics inside the airport tower and takes control of all their items – the instrument that lands the planes and all radios. He then says that, in a couple of hours, a cargo plane will be landing. The plane has a man named Ramon Esperanza. Esperanza is the drug lord of the fictional country of Val Verde. The United States Justice Department is going to put him in jail. Stuart tells them that he wants a fully-fueled Boeing 747 to be put on the runway and says that nobody should touch the Esperanza's plane or try to restore the landing instruments.

McClane finds a janitor named Marvin.  McClane has Marvin tell him where to go. Just before McClane was forced out, he heard that the air traffic controllers wanted to head to the Annex Skywalk, a new branch of the airport, to restore their systems. Lorenzo sends his SWAT team and the communications director, Leslie Barnes, to head to the Skywalk. As McClane expected, Stuart's men attack the SWAT team. They kill all five members and are about to kill Barnes when McClane comes through a vent shaft and kills them all.

Moments later, the antenna outpost explodes. It was a trap. Stuart then calls in to tell them that it was stupid to try to restore their systems. He then picks a flight that is low on fuel. He resets the ground level of the landing system to be 200 feet below, so that when the plane is at 200 feet they think they are at 400 feet.  He then crashes the plane into the ground, killing all of the passengers on board.

Afterwards, a Special Forces unit from the United States Army comes in, led by Major Grant. They take a meeting in the pilot's briefing room. McClane gets Marvin to try to tell him where the room is. During the search, McClane finds a two-way radio that one of Stuart's men dropped.  He listens in and finds out that Esperanza has taken over the plane and shot the two pilots. The plane is out of control and he needs to land right away.  Stuart tells him to land on the nearest runway.

McClane gets out there first and punches him before Stuart's men show up. They trap him in the cockpit and throw grenades. McClane escapes by strapping up in the pilot's ejection seat and blasting off as the grenades explode.

Barnes listens to McClane's story. Because Stuart's men showed up so fast, Barnes thinks that they must be close by.  They find the church where they are basing their operations and send in the Army Special Forces out there to fight. During the gun battle, McClane sees that Stuart's men are escaping on snowmobiles.  He shoots one guy with a gun that he stole, takes his mobile, and chases after them. However his gun does not work and his mobile gets shot and he falls down. He opens his gun and finds that there were rubber bullets in there.  He realizes that Stuart and the special forces are working together.

McClane comes back to the airport. He says that they are working together. Lorezno does not believe him until McClane fires the gun to show that they are rubber bullets. Meanwhile, the people at the airport are panicked. A reporter named Richard Thornberg has broadcast that terrorists have taken over the airport.  As a result, Lorenzo and McClane cannot get out there fast enough.

Instead, McClane gets a ride with Samantha Coleman and her news helicopter. The 747 has already left the hanger. McClane gets the pilot to drop him over the wing of the 747. Esperanza, who is flying the plane, sees McClane. Grant goes out there fights but is sucked into the engine of the plane.  McClane finds the fuel hatch.  When Stuart kicks McClane off the plane, McClane manages to open it and the plane starts losing fuel.  McClane then takes his cigarette lighter and ignites the fuel and the plane blows up.

The fire trail of the plane allows the planes flying overhead to see the ground. Holly lands safely and the two of them come back together. The movie ends with Marvin driving them off.

Cast
Bruce Willis as John McClane
Bonnie Bedelia as Holly Gennero McClane
William Atherton as Richard "Dick" Thornburg
Reginald VelJohnson as Sergeant Al Powell
Franco Nero as General Ramon Esperanza
William Sadler as Colonel Stuart
John Amos as Major Grant
Dennis Franz as Captain Carmine Lorenzo
Art Evans as Leslie Barnes
Fred Dalton Thompson as Ed Trudeau
Tom Bower as Marvin
Sheila McCarthy as Samantha "Sam" Coleman
Don Harvey as Garber

Release dates

Related pages
Die Hard
Die Hard with a Vengeance
Live Free or Die Hard
A Good Day to Die Hard

References

Other websites

1990 action movies
1990 crime movies
1990s action thriller movies
1990s crime thriller movies
1990s sequel movies
20th Century Fox movies
American sequel movies
Die Hard movies
Movies about murderers
Movies based on books
Movies set in Virginia
Movies directed by Renny Harlin