Die Hard 2: Die Harder Blu-ray offers decent video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Bruce Willis returns as the heroic cop who battles not only terrorists, but also an incompetent
airport police chief, the hard-headed commander of the Army's anti-terrorist squad and a
deadly winter snowstorm. The runways are littered with death and destruction, and McClane is
in a race against time. His wife is trapped on one of the planes circling overhead, which is
desperately low on fuel. It's all-out war, a heart-stopping, jet-propelled journey filled with
excitement and terror. Fasten your seat belts!
I'm not going to contest the impact that the Die Hard franchise has made on the action
genre. The first movie is a bona fide macho classic that, like a Hitchcock film on steroids, took an
unsuspecting everyman and thrust him into a situation that required calm under fire, ingenuity,
and massive balls of steel. It employed never before seen set pieces and special effects, it gave us a
wickedly memorable villain in Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber, and it launched Bruce Willis into an
action star orbit previously only occupied by Stallone and Schwarzenegger. But for all its ante-
upping and ingenuity, Die Hard wasn't immune to sequelitis, that damnable disease that
plagues most high-grossing, blockbusting summer crowd pleasers. Die Hard 2: Die Harder
might as well have been subtitled Try Harder, as it adheres to the bigger-faster-harder-
more follow-up philosophy, resulting in an over-bloated experience that's sloppier, more tedious, and
infinitely less memorable than its game-changing predecessor. It's still decent, lazy Sunday
afternoon entertainment if you're feeling particularly non-discerning and just want to turn your
brain off for two hours, but that really isn't saying much, is it?
John McClane and his veritable snowbank of dandruff.
"Another basement, another elevator," says Willis's John McClane. "How can the same s—t
happen to the same guy twice?" Well, I'll tell you how. It's clear that screenwriters Richard E. de
Souza and Doug Richardson were either at a loss for where to take the story, or they just decided
to take the easy way out and reuse the first film's premise—renegade cop rescues his wife and
others from a group of terrorists—and simply reset it in a new location, Dulles International
Airport. Even the Christmas Eve time frame is recycled without any questions of implausibility. If
I were a superstitious man, I'd make damn sure I was as far away from John McClane as possible
on the night before Christmas. Thankfully, the series moves away from its Yuletide origins in later
installments, but in Die Harder we're left to scratch our heads along with McClane and
wonder why we're given almost the exact same set-up as last time.
The variables, of course, are slightly different. Instead of a charming East German terrorist, we
get William Sadler as Colonel Stuart, an ex-military man who is introduced doing Tai Chi—naked,
buttocks tightly clenched—in front of a hotel mirror. These are the kind of people we're dealing
with. Colonel Stuart has an intricate plan to rescue a deposed Latin American general—a Fidel
Castro look-alike—who is set to arrive at Dulles and be transferred into U.S. custody. Basically,
the plan is to set up a truckload of high-tech equipment at a nearby church—we know it's high-
tech because there are lots of flashing lights—and hack the air traffic control system so that he's
effectively holding every airborne passenger on the eastern seaboard unknowingly hostage. As it
so happens, John McClane's wife (Bonnie Bedelia) is aboard one of the planes, and if there's one
thing that potential terrorists shouldn't do if they want to successfully carry out their sinister
agendas, it's take John McClane's wife hostage. Seriously, it's not going to get you
anywhere.
For Die Harder, directing duties were handed off to Renny Harlin, then a hotshot Finnish
helmer with style to burn, and now unfortunately recognized as a guy who's pretty good at
making big budget garbage like Exorcist: The Beginning, The Covenant, and
Deep Blue Sea. (One wonders what Alien 3 would've been like had he saw it to
completion, as was 20th Century Fox's original intent.) Harlin handles the action quite
competently here, actually, but despite bigger-should-be-better explosions, some crazy shootouts,
and even an ejector seat moment straight out of a Looney Toons episode, a stale air pervades the
film and keeps the sequences from being as memorable as anything the first Die Hard
had to offer. The film is at its best when McClane is playing hardball with the local law
enforcement, led by a somewhat overzealous Dennis Franz as Captain Lorenzo, or making his
way alone through the labyrinthine hallways beneath the airport. Willis is a dependable presence
with his tender tough guy shtick, and he's always fun to watch, but the obligatory one-liners and
quick retorts aren't nearly as punchy here. It certainly doesn't help that the film is much longer
than it needs to be, spending far too much time on an initial set-up that requires very little.
Tension sags at several points, and what suspense the film does manage to ratchet is unspooled
by plot holes, implausibility, and continuity issues.
If anything, Die Harder is good for a dose of late '80s, early '90s nostalgia, especially if
you're pining for the days when fax machines were novel, hacking a computer network was an
original plot device, and airport security was much more lax. At one point, both McClane and a
hot-for-the-scoop journalist (Sheila McCarthy) waltz up into the air traffic control tower, no
questions asked. Try that now and you'd probably get deported to Guantanamo. Even the film's
brand of ultra right-wing terrorism—the Fidel Castro look-alike is actually anti-communist
—seems quaint in retrospect, especially because the villain's goons are all of the you know
I'm bad because my hair is slicked back variety. And William Sadler's Colonel Stuart really is
the film's undoing. Where Hans Gruber was a worthy and intelligent adversary for McClane,
Colonel Stuart is merely sour and mean-spirited. When he brings down a 747, killing all
passengers on board just to make a point, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find humor in
Die Harder's goofier moments. Renny Harlin ups the gore quotient and gives us more
sprawling action sequences, but without a wily foil for McClane, bigger is simply bitter, not better.
Originally released in late 2007 as part of The Die Hard Collection, Die Hard 2
shows its age in both hazy late '80s filmmaking techniques and a 1080p/AVC encode that seems
like it's still feeling out the boundaries of its then relatively new high definition format. The film
doesn't look bad by any means, but it doesn't exactly provide the 50-foot leap in clarity and color
that we've become accustomed to with Blu-ray. While close ups show a fair amount of fine detail—
see the texture on McClane's Eddie Bauer-looking sweater—anytime we pull back into longer shots
the image takes on a noticeably softer quality. Certain colors appear very strong, like the reds and
blues of police sirens, or the pinkish glow inside the air traffic control room, but skin tones
occasionally veer towards an overly tanned orange, and other hues seem flat and lifeless. Likewise,
contrast seems a bit dull and black levels, while truly deep at times, have a tendency to go opaque
and grayish during the darker scenes, effectively crushing shadow detail. On the plus side, I didn't
notice any rampant compression artifacts, aside from some brief banding and color blotchiness
during a few explosions, and both edge enhancement and noise reduction seem to have been kept
to a minimum. Grain is mostly unobtrusive, but look out for the special effects shot, which swarm
with huge chunks of it.
Die Harder arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that
sounds about average for an action film of its 1990 vintage. Meaning, the effects are kind of
clunky, stocky, and artificial, directionality lacks subtlety, and the track's mid-range sounds
slightly hollow. Real speaker usage is frequent but not entirely convincing. Airport ambience
seems canned, movements through the surround channels are heavy handed, and machine gun
blasts feel as if they were selected from a sound effects library and simply dropped into the track
with little concern for acoustics. When Michael Kamen's score kicks into high gear and the action
scenes really ramp up, some of this artificiality is lost in the sheer amount of sound, but it's
always there if you listen closely. The track's low-end is adequate, but the two or three massive
explosions in the film, which should rattle the picture frames on your walls, seem to lack any real
heft or presence. Overall, the sound is suitable but it doesn't really bring anything new to the
experience of watching the film—not that that's necessarily a bad thing.
Do note that some viewers have reported problems with their players being unable to decode the
DTS-HD Master Audio track and forcing the Dolby Digital mix instead. For the record, I had no
problems on my PS3 with up-to-date firmware.
Commentary by Director Renny Harlin
He may not be the most creative or credible director, but Renny Harlin knows how to
enthusiastically fill up a commentary track with anecdotes, thoughtful ruminations on shooting
action sequences, and endless amounts of trivia. The pace rarely flags here, so prepare to get an
earful.
Deleted Scenes (SD, 8:15)
There are four deleted scenes, including one with a horrible children's choir at the airport wearing
ridiculous red bows.
Featurettes (SD) HBO First Look (23:08) is a vintage making-of documentary that's even more dated than
the film itself, but certainly worth a watch for fans. A condensed and aptly named
Featurette (4:07) follows, which recycles material from the HBO special. The Bad
Guys (6:39) is a quick look at the film's baddies, complete with interviews with William
Saddler. Breaking the Ice (4:10) takes us behind the scenes of the film's snowmobile
chase. Chaos on the Conveyor Belt (7:53) leads us through the early shoot-out in the
baggage room. The Interview with Renny Harlin (6:44) is somewhat of a misnomer, as it
features just as much screen time by William Saddler.
Next up are three visual effects breakdowns, Ejector Seat (3:19), Airport
Runway (1:58), and Storyboard Sequence (2:58), followed by three side-by-side
comparisons, Chopper (1:19), Airplane Models (3:13), and Wing Fight
(1:44).
Trailers and TV Spots (SD, 6:17)
Includes four trailers and two TV spots.
Fox on Blu-ray (1080p, 7:48 total)
Includes trailers for Die Hard, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Live Free or Die
Hard, and Alien vs. Predator.
Die Harder is definitely the black sheep of the Die Hard franchise, and I don't really
mean that in a good way. Director Renny Harlin kicks the action up a notch, but the film's darker
tone means the first film's characteristic humor is noticeably dampened. I don't think I'd personally
pick this one up on its own, but I definitely wouldn't mind having it as part of The Die Hard
Collection, which fans should consider before buying the individual releases.
Amazon's current Blu-ray Boxed Set of the Week is for The Die Hard Collection (comprised of Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Live Free or Die Hard) for only $32.99 (59% off MSRP, or just over $8 per movie). The price tracker shows ...
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