Die Hard 2: Die Harder
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Die Hard 2: Die Harder, the second Die Hard movie, was released on Wednesday, July 4, 1990 starring Bruce Willis as cop John McClane, and also starred Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, William Atherton, Dennis Franz and Fred Dalton Thompson.
McClane is waiting for his wife to land at Washington's Dulles Airport when terrorists take over. He must stop the terrorists before his wife's plane, circling the airport, crashes.
The movie is based on a novel by Walter Wager, entitled 58 minutes. The novel has the same premise: a cop must stop terrorists who take an airport hostage while his wife circles overhead. He has 58 minutes to do so before his wife's plane crashes.
Die Hard 2 was the first movie to have a digitally-manipulated matte painting, used for the very last scene which pulled back from a runway.
Die Hard 2 was followed by Die Hard: With a Vengeance in 1995.
While lacking the huge impact of the original, the movie was a box-office success and received a reasonably positive critical reception. Roger Ebert, while noting the not insubstantial plot credibility problems with the movie, described it as "terrific entertainment".
Trivia
See also: GLOCK 7, a fictional gun referenced in this movie.
The movie was not filmed at Dulles, but at Denver's now-closed Stapleton International Airport. This was done mainly because the producers needed an area that had frequent and consistent snowfall, which Denver has.
Amongst other implausibilities, one key to the plot (that planes would continue to circle an airport waiting to land until they were unable to divert elsewhere) does not reflect reality. Under flight regulations, planes must always maintain enough fuel to divert to another airport and land there. In the densely-populated north-eastern United States, there are a considerable number of airfields with instrument landing facilities which would have been available for landing.