PMDN: Die Hard 2 and 3

July 29th, 2007 by Jaybrams

It was nice to have a second PMDN (Poor Man’s Date Night) this week as the kids spent the night with the Mimi. We decided to finish up the original Die Hard trilogy in one fail swoop. I’ll start with DH2:Die Harder (1990).

A lot of people were telling me this was better than the original, and I have to disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it a lot. Instead of telling why I liked it, lets talk about why I’ll take DH over DH2.

1) John McClane is more authentic every-man in the first as opposed to having a true hero “Cowboy” mentality in the second. Both are situations of desperation that he is thrust into, but he is a much more unwilling participant in the first one. In DH2, he forces himself into the situation and is more than willing to get involved. Both work for his character, I just prefer the attitude he had in the first.

2) The story line suffers quite a bit. I’m not necessarily one of those “realists” that doesn’t like a little poetic license in movies… give me ridiculous action and “that could never happen” moments. I enjoy them. But to me there were just too many things that didn’t make logical sense… seriously, I could list a very large handful. No one in their right mind would make some of the decisions that the good guys in this movie were making. To top it off, I’d say it was fairly predictable.

3) William Sadler is not nude in the first one. And that’s a good thing.

Quickly, I’ll say despite these three things, i’d still give it about a 7 out of 10… or 3.5 out of 5… or 1.4 thumbs up (out of 2) for its sheer entertainment value.

Now onto DH:With a Vengence (1995).

There’s really not much to say other than it is not near as good as either of the others. The riddles were cute and the bad guy was pretty clever, but the story line really began to suffer in this one. “Hey Zues” was a great character (Sam L Jackson) and their is a good deal more humor in this offering, but I just couldn’t connect what was going on with any sort of reality. I HATED the character John McClane became during the 5 year hiatus; not his bad-assness (which was still there), but the fact that his life had fallen apart. I much prefered the John McClane in DH that you could sense wanted to make things right with his wife; and I really liked the McClane in DH2 that genuinely loved his wife. What happened to that guy? So, bottom line, enjoyed the action, enjoyed the relationship between McClane and Zues, but can’t put it above 3 stars, teetering on 2.5.

So, there you have it… i’m much more cultured now. Looking forward to Live Free or Die Hard at some point.

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