Die Hard 2

It's Christmas Eve at a busy airport.  Terrorists have taken over the control room and you have limited options to solve this crisis other than listening to their demands.  Corrupt army officers abound, and there are few people who you can trust.  So who do you call?  Well, the one-and-only Bruce Willis - er, John McClane.  More specifically, John McClane is the one who calls you.  Thus is the premise of the second installment of the popular Die Hard series.  Die Hard 2 is one of those very few movies which has a very serious and heavy plot that is balanced out by just a sheer amount of fun and cinematic pleasure.  While the film does have some flaws, it is, on the whole, quite the enjoyable ride, filled to the brim with outrageous situations and action-packed scenes.

As with most films of the franchise, Die Hard 2 does not rely too heavily on plot or an entirely sensible story.  Instead, the plot mostly serves as a means for all of the action to even exist.  The bad guys are ruthless, technically-advanced terrorists with absolutely no regard for human life.  Every other authority/government figure (besides Officer McClane, of course) is either corrupt or unhelpful.  It is up to Officer McClane to save the day once again, yadda yadda yadda.  Yeah, the plot is certainly not anything stellar, to be sure.  On the other hand, the film's story is well-thought out and not bad or stupid enough to destroy one's suspension of disbelief.  It serves its role rather well in this sense -  after all, Die Hard didn't break ground for its story-telling.  Indeed, the series is mostly notable for its gratuitous violence and swearing.  Speaking of...

The action sequences in this flick are nothing short of top-notch.  The are intense gunfights, brawls, chase scenes, etc, all of which are done incredibly well (special shout-out to the brawl that occurs in the luggage conveyor belts near the beginning of the film).   There is blood... and bodies... and guns... and they all help to  convey the intensity of the scene at hand. In fat, at one point, McClane manages to find himself stuck in a plane with the enemy terrorists surrounding him.  When a live grenade gets tossed into the plane by chief baddie Colonel Stuart (William Sadler), Officer John dupes his foes by using the ejector seat in the plane's cockpit.  It is this scene which helps to drive home the main division within the film - the plot is quite serious and emotionally charged, while the action is quite gratuitous and over-the-top.  This is also seen earlier in the film, in which the terrorists manage to crash a commercial jet, killing all 200+ passengers.  This scene is so powerful, upsetting and harrowing that it can really touch a viewer in their spiritual core.  And then you get Willis making faces like this not even 20 minutes later:

Overall, Die Hard 2  is a damn fine, action-packed flick that knows exactly what it is and runs with that information all the way through.  While the plot isn't perfect, it is solid and does its job well, and really allows for the stellar action sequences to be allowed.

4 out of 5 stars.