DIE HARD 2: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Die Hard 2 (1990) – Directed by Renny Harlin – Starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, Art Evans, William Atherton, Franco Nero, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, Tom Bower, Sheila McCarthy, John Amos, Robert Patrick, Colm Meaney, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Reginald VelJohnson.

“What sets off the metal detectors first? The lead in your ass or the sh*t in your brains?”
- John McClane to Captain Lorenzo

Yes, the final 20 minutes or so of DIE HARD 2 stretches credibility. Seeing John McClane jump onto a moving plane and taking out two trained military soldiers on the wing as the plane speeds towards takeoff is a step too far because it superhumanizes McClane – until then, the stunts he performs are largely plausible. Yeah, sure, the amount of trained bad guys he kills is pushing it, but taking out four bad guys in an otherwise empty airport terminal isn’t something you can’t conceive of him doing.

Jumping on the wing of a moving airplane from a helicopter in the middle of a snowstorm, though? Yeah. Pushing it.

That’s only the final act in what’s otherwise a thoroughly satisfying sequel. DIE HARD 2, with Renny Harlin taking over the director’s chair from John McTeirnan, is a rock-solid action movie that manages to hit all the right beats from the original DIE HARD while twisting expectations just enough that the story still feels fresh and urgent, instead of stale and repetitive.

The first thing that DH2 does right is that it acknowledges the repetitive nature of McClane (Bruce Willis) once again finding himself in a crazy hostage situation. Since the film has a good humor about what’s going on, we are invited to laugh at seeing McClane again crawling through air ducts, stuck in basements, and arguing with authority. The film wisely doesn’t repeat all of its beats, however. Where the last film had McClane teaming with Sgt. Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), the sequel has John calling Al early in the film because his “sidekick” cop this time around serves as an extra antagonist rather than an ally. Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) is the head of Dulles International Airport’s police squad and some of the films best smiles come from watching him and McClane verbally joust with one another. DH2 further inverts the McClane/PD structure by having Trudeau (Fred Thompson), Dulles’ Head of Operations, sympathetic to what McClane is trying to do. While Trudeau isn’t an ally who gives McClane free run of the airport, he is willing to listen to the semi-famous cop from the Nakatomi incident of two years previous, always to the consternation of Lorenzo.

DIE HARD 2 also makes an effort at the start of the film to humanize McClane. The first film showed that he was afraid of flying, and this time around he’s getting his car towed from outside of Dulles as he waits for his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) to arrive for the Christmas holidays. McClane is living and working in LA now, but they’re spending the holidays in DC with Holly’s parents. By putting Holly on a plane, it repeats the first film’s use of Holly as a hostage, though this time it’s because she’s trapped in a plane the terrorists refuse to let land.

I could have done without the plane angle in terms of having Holly and reporter Richard Thornburg (William Atherton) back for a second go-round in familiar roles. All of the plane scenes are effective, so they’re not a huge negative in the film, but it would have been nice to see an alteration of the formula. I thought it was coming. It’s Thornburg who realizes something is wrong when he sees a number of planes flying near the plane he and Holly are on and it’s Thornburg who gets his assistant to monitor radio frequencies, which leads to them learning the truth about why they’re in the air. It would have been a perfect opportunity to have Holly and Thornburg put aside their differences and work together, but the film is determined to keep Thornburg as a jerk, even if Thornburg does real reporting. Sure, he’s a glory hog, but he does his job and gets the story.

DIE HARD 2 introduces a new reporter that is cast as the “good” alternative to Thornburg. Samantha Coleman (Sheila McCarthy) is at Dulles to cover the story of the arrival of General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero). Esperanza is being extradited to the United States because he’s a drug lord, but for some reason the government agents in charge of the swap are sitting in the airport like they’re two chumps waiting for their flight to Charlotte and offer blah “No comments” to Coleman. (They could at least have said, “Merry Christmas.”) Coleman generally makes a pain of herself through most of the film as no one wants to talk to the press (the level of anti-press hostility in the first two DIE HARD movies is pretty extraordinary), but she redeems herself in the hand when McClane needs her help to get to the airfield, and then prevents her cameraman from filming more than a couple seconds of John and Holly’s reunion.

Through it all, though, it’s still John McClane’s show. His main ally this time around is Leslie Barnes (Art Evans), the airport’s communication director. Like Al, Barnes is lower down on the totem pole, but unlike Al, Barnes can affect real change in the narrative because he’s inside the airport and involved with the action. Barnes represents same common sense approach, however, that McClane demonstrates and it’s why the two men bond. Where Lorenzo sees McClane as a threat and Trudeau can’t fully accept McClane’s help, Barnes sees that McClane is their best shot for stopping the terrorists.

The terrorists are largely just here to give McClane someone to fight. Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) has none of the charisma of Hans Gruber, but he is coolly effective. It’s a smart move, to be honest, again varying up the formula. The political motivations of the terrorists are real this time, as Stuart’s group is attempting to rescue General Esperanza, and when he and Major Grant (John Amos) align with him, there’s … well, there’s still not much antagonistic personality.

There’s not as many great lines or even great scenes this time around, but it’s hard for me to think of DIE HARD 2 as a disappointment. I rewatched it the day after rewatching DIE HARD and at no point in the viewing was I bored. Renny Harlin keeps everything moving, and substituting McTiernan’s technical proficiency with Harlin’s frenetic energy works to the film’s advantage. I enjoyed little touches, too, like the abundance of snow naturally raising the stakes and changing up the visual palette, and I love behind-the-scenes sequences, like we get here in the baggage area and in the basement beneath the runway. Perhaps the scene that best represents DIE HARD 2 comes when McClane proves his point to Lorenzo that Major Grant was playing them. Lorenzo doesn’t want to hear it, so McClane “opens fire” with the automatic machine gun he took from Stuart’s mercenaries. Everyone freaks but no bullets are fired, and Lorenzo is won over once he realizes he hasn’t been turned into pulp.

That scene turns the movie’s main structure on its head: McClane is right, the people in power don’t listen, he makes a big scene. Usually that scene involves killing someone or blowing something up, but this time, it’s the lack of death and destruction.

DIE HARD 2 has aged very well. I did not buy the new Blu-ray box set because while I love 1 and 3, my memory was lukewarm on 2 and 4, so I settled on buying the original for $10. I kinda wish now I had bought the box set because I’m absolutely certain I’ll watch DIE HARD 2 more over the next 23 years than I have in the 23 years since it was released.

IDENTITY THIEF: That’s a Terrible F*cking Name

Identity Thief (2013) – Directed by Seth Gordon – Starring Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Robert Patrick, John Cho, Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, Genesis Rodríguez, T.I., Morris Chestnut, Eric Stonestreet, and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

It was an afternoon of pleasant surprises: the weather was nicer than I thought it would be, IDENTITY THIEF is funnier than I thought it would be, and when I turned my iPhone back on after the movie, all of my contacts were mysteriously erased.

Okay, so that last one isn’t a pleasant surprise, but I was able to take Darwin for a long walk this morning before the movie and I was constantly amused by IDENTITY THIEF throughout the film. The film contains a handful of laugh out loud moments and if you like Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy (as I do), then there’s no reason you won’t like IDENTITY THIEF.

Directed by Seth Gordon (who directed the excellent documentary The King of Kong and the very funny Horrible Bosses), THIEF is a standard anti-buddy road comedy. Diana (McCarthy) is the titular identity thief, and when she steals the identity of Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Bateman), he takes the law into his own hands and flies from Colorado to Florida in order to bring her back to Denver to put everything right and allow him to keep his new job.

When Patterson gets to Florida he quickly finds Diana, but then criminals Marisol and Julian (Genesis Rodríguez and T.I.) show up for retribution for bad deeds Diana has enacted on them, and a bounty hunter (Robert Patrick) joins the mix, adding a small element of a chase film into the mix.

The focus is on Bateman and McCarthy, though, and the success of the film is thanks to their interaction. Sandy is the do-gooder and Diana is the shady con artist and the film does an excellent job both playing their differences off one another and then showing them growing together. THIEF is running the same ground as a film like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in that these two characters are definitely not pals at the start of the film but come to truly like one another as the story unfolds. Sandy is a nice guy but he’s not a total schlub who lets the world walk all over him. He’s understandably upset at Diana and doesn’t let her forget it for a good long while.

Critically, it’s Diana who first acts on his behalf. In a very funny sequence where Diana spins a lie at a bar to Big Chuck (Eric Stonestreet) about how Sandy likes to watch her with other men, Sandy ends up locking himself in the bathroom as Diana and Chuck have sex. It’s funny but there’s a really deep undertone to the scene – Diana’s actions are motivated by her own loneliness. We see this at the beginning of the movie when a bartender tells her no one in the bar actually likes her, they just like buying her drinks, and it runs through the movie until Diana comes clean about her origins of being abandoned by her parents and running through multiple foster homes. Here in the hotel room, once Sandy shuts himself in the bathroom, Diana intends to drug Chuck and abscond with Chuck and Sandy’s wallets and valuables. Instead of drugging Chuck, however, she ends up being moved by his story of not having been with anyone since his wife (she initially thinks he’s rejecting her, with gives the scene some gravitas), and decides to have sex with him.

McCarthy does a fantastic job here balancing Diana’s cons with her real emotions and I’m often left momentarily wondering whether we’re seeing the real Diana or the fake Diana. While she’s moved enough to have sex with Chuck, she has not undergone the full conversion, yet, as after he passes out she locks Sandy in the bathroom, takes Chuck and Sandy’s stuff, and leaves. When she hits the car, however, a phone call from Sandy’s family catches her off guard. She looks at the photo of his kids and has a change of heart. She returns to the room just as Sandy breaks the door down, and she tells him she was just out checking on the ice, and then crawls pathetically into bed.

Strawberry Quik in powder form. I drank the hell out of this stuff as a kid, even though I never understood why that pink bunny is wearing a strawberry for a hat.

Now that Diana has earned some sympathy points with the viewers, the film then immediately allows Sandy to have both a jerk and redemption moment. At checkout the next morning, he’s on edge and engages in a really funny exchange with a bored clerk. (“Did you enjoy your stay?” “No.”) A hungover Diana has asked him to get her some Strawberry Quik. Sandy asks the clerk if they have any and she says yes, but he doesn’t buy her any. When he’s getting himself some coffee, however, Robert Patrick kidnaps her and Sandy is quick to run after them. Now, yes, he needs her to get his good name back, but as she rightly points out later, he calls her his friend during his verbal exchange with Patrick, and his actions seem to be partially motivated out of genuine concern.

Sandy ends up crashing Patrick’s van and after he pulls Diana from the wreckage, there’s a small back and forthe between the two of them. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but what I do remember is that it was both quickly the exchange transpired and how none of it was all that important. It was a genuine exchange, though, that felt very conversational and real, and not just a set-up and punch line. I like that – Sandy and Diana are well-rounded characters, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but in comedies now I’m much more interested in movies with good characters in a good story that’s amusing than I am in watching a film that is constantly going for the quick hit-and-run jokefest approach.

The ending of IDENTITY THIEF is really something fantastic, and had me leaving the theater feeling up. From the moment Sandy takes Diana to his house and through to Sandy’s family visiting Diana in jail, the film has an almost perfect mix of being funny, touching, and even a little sad. The resolution of Diana going to jail, but Sandy and his family visiting her hit a perfect note, and the funniest line of the movie (the title of this review) comes right at the end.

IDENTITY THIEF isn’t quite as funny as either of Bateman or McCarthy’s best efforts, but it is a really good film. I only went to see it because I was in the mood for some popcorn, but I had a smile on my face from start to finish.

THE FACULTY: Aliens are Taking Over the World. Weigh It.

The Faculty (1998) – Directed by Robert Rodriguez – Starring Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Chris McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Usher Raymond, Jon Stewart, Daniel Von Bargen, and Elijah Wood.

I love THE FACULTY. It’s one of those under-the-radar movies that I champion whenever I get a chance. Written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Robert Rodriguez, THE FACULTY is a really good, really smart high school horror film that deftly plugs into teenage anxiety to create characters that are built on clearly recognizable types, but then quickly outstrip them.

While not as clever a script as SCREAM, THE FACULTY is does a far better job with allowing its characters to become more complex as the film progresses. High schools are wonderfully awful places where kids try to figure out where they fit in the grand scheme and teachers try to successfully tread water until retirement hits; students in high school are amazingly easy to type based on surface appearances and Williamson starts with what everyone can see to begin his character examinations.

Williamson’s script does two things to complicate his characters: reveal hidden truths and let new talents emerge. For characters like Stan (Shawn Hatosy), the captain of the football team, Williamson reveals that Stan is tired of everyone kissing his ass. He tells Stokely (Clea DeVall), the grungy, solitary “lesbian,” that his tipping point came the previous year when his ‘D’ on an exam was changed to an ‘A’ by the teacher because he had a good year. This torques Stan off: “I earned that D,” he insists. “That was my D.” Stokely also gets the reveal treatment: first by telling Marybeth (Laura Harris), the cutesy new girl, that she’s not actually a lesbian. She just tells people that because it keeps people away. Later on, in response to Stan opening up to her, she opens up to him, telling him he was a great football player. Stan is both as surprised that Stokes follows football as he is pleased that she knew about him.

On the other side, we have characters birthing new talents as the film progresses and the alien takeover threat becomes more pronounced. Zeke (Josh Hartnett), the bad boy repeating his senior year, develops a natural leadership ability. When the kids are huddled in his garage-based laboratory, it’s Zeke who insists they all do a shot of his caffeine-based drug that he peddles at school. And later, when the kids have trapped Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth) in the gym and they’re hesitating to either shoot her or douse her with the caffeine, it’s Zeke who steps in, takes the gun, and sends a bullet through her forehead. Casey (Elijah Wood), the high school’s whipping boy, is allowed to leave his shell, becoming an important member of the group. He’s not the biggest brain, but he has the wits to see how things connect, and in the biggest turn, he becomes something of an action star when he’s the Last Kid Standing and needs to take down the alien queen all by his lonesome.

The one character who doesn’t really change all that much is Delilah (the always stunning Jordana Brewster), the snotty It Girl who dates Stan simply because he’s the quarterback of the football team and she’s the hottest girl in school. Obsessed with the school’s social hierarchy, she dumps Stan when he quits the team. We get a bit of a reveal in that she’s the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, but she’s not EIC so she can investigate hard hitting issues; she’s the EIC because she can use the paper to settle personal scores and embarrass people at the school. When she and Casey stumble onto the secret that one of the faculty is dead and being stored in the faculty room closet, she shows up at school the next day wearing glasses so she’s not as noticeable … as if that ever works anywhere except Metropolis. At the beginning of the film she dumps Stan because he’s no longer the top guy on the school’s social ladder and at the end of the film she’s dating Casey because he’s now the top guy, as the national media descends on the school to hear Casey’s story.

THE FACULTY brilliantly taps into realistic high school fears of not being cool and not being believed (not aliens). All of the kids are aware of the power of their coolness, or lack there-of, and keenly aware of their place in the social structure of the high school. In that regard, THE FACULTY has as much in common with The Breakfast Club as it does Scream, though like Scream, THE FACULTY is aware of the “rules” of the story. Stokely is a big sci-fi fan and clues the group in on the way these stories are supposed to work.

While the kids work together, they’re not all “all for one and one for all,” and their shifting importance to the group keeps the tension running high. The actual threat is a lot of adults standing around looking menacing, but I always felt the stakes were real in THE FACULTY, and that the kids knew how that. Crisply paced, tightly directed, and wonderfully acted, THE FACULTY is an under-appreciated gem.