It's a reworking of "Die Hard" with a bigger budget and clumsier plot. The formula, in only its second appearance, is already entering its decadent stage.
Bruce Willis plays the same character and goes through the same motions and dresses in what appear to be the same clothes. He appears to be positively superhuman. Everybody shoots at him and misses. He can fall three stories to the asphalt with no more than a wince. He wears his blood in different places though. Bonny Bedalia could have been left out.
William Atherton duplicates his role as egomaniacal spoiler, almost word for word. William Sadler is the chief villain, with a face so ugly that if it were a building it would be condemned. Fred Dalton Thompson demonstrates his striking range of expressions. When he's sad, he looks unhappy. When he's happy, he also looks unhappy. He projects deep thought by looking unhappy. Whatever the thespian demands made on him he projects an overwhelming absorption with some deep inner condition, maybe a strangulated hernia.
The setting this time is Dulles, Washington's glamour airport. (Nobody of weight ever uses the other one.) The villains are terrorists again, only this time they are helping some kind of Latin American strong man to escape custody. At least THESE villains don't speak German with a Russian accent! They're the home-bred, good old-fashioned American variety, and some of them are not only heavies but traitorous members of the military elite.
The score substitutes Sibelius for Beethoven behind the climactic action. (Next time, Kenny G?) Some of the action scenes are better choreographed than in the original "Die Hard" and that's saying a lot, because the original had superb staging.
It has come to this. We must now begin to compare action movies to one another by ranking them in terms of how adroit their scenes of slaughter are, because after all, what else do they have to offer? At one point Willis beaten, bloody, and freezing, falls through a hole in the floor and looks around dazed. "Another elevator! Another basement! How many times can the same THING happen to the same GUY?" he wonders.
Well, Bruce, it can happen three times.
Bruce Willis plays the same character and goes through the same motions and dresses in what appear to be the same clothes. He appears to be positively superhuman. Everybody shoots at him and misses. He can fall three stories to the asphalt with no more than a wince. He wears his blood in different places though. Bonny Bedalia could have been left out.
William Atherton duplicates his role as egomaniacal spoiler, almost word for word. William Sadler is the chief villain, with a face so ugly that if it were a building it would be condemned. Fred Dalton Thompson demonstrates his striking range of expressions. When he's sad, he looks unhappy. When he's happy, he also looks unhappy. He projects deep thought by looking unhappy. Whatever the thespian demands made on him he projects an overwhelming absorption with some deep inner condition, maybe a strangulated hernia.
The setting this time is Dulles, Washington's glamour airport. (Nobody of weight ever uses the other one.) The villains are terrorists again, only this time they are helping some kind of Latin American strong man to escape custody. At least THESE villains don't speak German with a Russian accent! They're the home-bred, good old-fashioned American variety, and some of them are not only heavies but traitorous members of the military elite.
The score substitutes Sibelius for Beethoven behind the climactic action. (Next time, Kenny G?) Some of the action scenes are better choreographed than in the original "Die Hard" and that's saying a lot, because the original had superb staging.
It has come to this. We must now begin to compare action movies to one another by ranking them in terms of how adroit their scenes of slaughter are, because after all, what else do they have to offer? At one point Willis beaten, bloody, and freezing, falls through a hole in the floor and looks around dazed. "Another elevator! Another basement! How many times can the same THING happen to the same GUY?" he wonders.
Well, Bruce, it can happen three times.