Die Hard Ep. 02 - Die Hard 2 / Passenger 57

It’s “Die Hard on a Plane” week as we take to the skies for two movies with a similar premise that could not be more different.

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER (1990) asks how the same shit can happen to the same guy twice. 

PASSENGER 57 (1992) stars Wesley Snipes as an airline security specialist facing off against a notorious hijacker.

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
to Get Me Another, a podcast where we explore those movies that followed in the wake ofblockbuster hits and attempted to replicate their success.
My name is Chris Ayanakone and with me are my co-hosts Rob Lemorgous.
Chris, it's the 90s remember?
Microchips, microwaves, faxes, air phones.
Airphones play key roles in both of these movies.

(00:40):
And Justin Beam!
Wake up and smell the 90s.
That's the line.
That's the line.
got it.
This is episode two in our series Get Me Another Die Hard.
Last week, we looked at John McTiernan's 1988 watershed action film Die Hard.
The main character, Detective John McClane, finds himself caught in what appears to be aterrorist takeover of his wife's office building during a Christmas party.

(01:09):
And that film marked a distinct departure from the invincible action heroes of the 80s.
also looked at one of the first films to employ the diehard formula, 1991's The Taking ofBeverly Hills, which saw an NFL quarterback played by Ken Wall trapped in Beverly Hills
when a group of ex-cops fake a chemical spill as cover for a massive robbery.

(01:35):
Just even just recapping it there, it's just insane.
They stole a wall.
They stole a wall.
This week we take to the skies for two films that revolve around airplanes and airportswith lone heroes taking on terrorists who have made the skies anything but friendly.

(01:57):
First up, John McClane returns to ask the question, how can the same thing happen to thesame guy twice?
From 1990, this is Die Hard 2, Die Harder.
Emergency.
We are in a code yellow!
Instrument landing system is down!
Backup systems won't come up!

(02:17):
Every system's dead!
These guys shut us down!
Attention all controllers, we have a code red alert.
We just bought maybe two hours.
After that, those planes low on fuel aren't gonna be circling.
They're gonna be dropping on the White House lawn.
I want every officer recalled and assembled in body armor with full weaponry in the motorpool in five minutes.
It's time to kick it.

(02:39):
Our own SWAT team's gone.
just a little bit more creative than you think.
Start looking for a new miracle.
Who the hell is this?
We don't need a loose cannon on this deck.
You get the hell out of my office before I throw you out of my damn airport.

(03:00):
Wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
story of my life
They say lightning doesn't strike twice.
I spent Christmas last year.

(03:23):
Is this what you were expecting?
This is just the beginning.
Bruce Willis.
Die Hard.
Die Harder.
I wanna start out with a personal memory of Die Hard 2 because I very strongly remember, Idid not see the first Die Hard movie in the theaters, but I saw Die Hard 2 in the theaters

(03:51):
and I can remember the very day I saw it because it was the day it opened.
It was July 4th, 1990, because I had seen the original Die Hard on HBO.
I was very excited for Die Hard 2.
And it opened that 4th of July weekend in 1990.
My dad and I went down to a late afternoon matinee on 4th of July at the Multiplex Cinemain Sayreville, New Jersey.

(04:19):
And we got out of the film and it had just, the sun had just gone down and we noticed thatwe could see the fireworks from over from New York City, from where we were in Sayreville.
And so we just said, well, hey, we have nowhere to be.
We sat on the hood of the car and watched the 4th of July fireworks from New York in thedistance.

(04:43):
I think of that fairly frequently as just a great memory.
And I'm glad I have that memory because revisiting Die Hard 2 this week, wow, this sequelis much rougher than I remember.
That's a really sweet story.
Oh, I love that.
And as the fireworks uh exploded, they rolled up the eighties behind him.

(05:07):
He just went into the nineties.
That's it.
mean, we're in the nineties now with Die Hard 2.
yeah, I mean, like I said, I have seen this.
It's funny because the two movies today, I have seen Die Hard 2.
I saw it the day it opened.
I've seen it many times since, although had been a little bit since I had last seen it.
I had never seen Passenger 57.

(05:29):
I don't know how that happened.
I don't know how I missed that when it was out in theaters, but this was the first time.
So one of these movies I know very well and
The other I was seeing for the first time and my reactions were completely different.
um Die Hard 2, I I liked it at the time I saw it, but I, man, it's a tough movie.

(05:50):
It's a much rougher movie than I remember.
These were both first watches for me.
I think it's time for me to confess in this series that I'm not a fan of action movies.
It's not one of my default settings.
And I, uh even when I was a kid, I just didn't, I don't know why I didn't really care.
And so this series is an interesting one for me.

(06:14):
And I have, I of course had seen diehard.
mean, of course you hadn't, but somehow the rest of that series.
Has eluded me for sure but none of this is anything that I ever would have sought out andso after watching Revisiting diehard for the last episode stepping into diehard 2 in the

(06:34):
beginning.
I was like, alright Alright, and we'll get into it.
Of course, right but this movie is bananas My son was asking me what was wrong because Iwas out here Chortling and laughing so hard throughout this and going like my god.
What that was my
Probably the most common thing I was saying was just what?

(06:55):
And then again, like, my God, as I'm watching it, for all of the glory that that firstfilm gets, they poured none of it into the second.
And it's remarkable how this thing is just jam packed with all the cliches from the worldof action films.
From front to back.
I can't wait to dive in on, I'm very excited.

(07:16):
Because you know, the worse the movie, the more I love us talking about it.
So I'm all in on this episode.
For me, my headline for Die Hard 2, colon Die Harder, is that, I mean, not since Conan theDestroyer, I think, have we had a sequel, at least on this show, where core elements of
the main character are just forgotten completely.

(07:37):
John McClane in this movie, it's the equivalent of Conan wearing the wheel that symbolizeshis slavery that he broke.
Honestly, is the costume design choice in any movie we've seen on this show that hasinfuriated me infuriated me the most is him having the wheel again in quote-unquote
destroyed the whole first movie is about him taking off the wheel and the costume is we'lljust put him back in the wheel.

(08:02):
I'm like but I completely understand what you were saying.
I think I think you're right.
I guess it's true.
And on that note before because I don't have any other notes about it I want to say thathe has a very nice sweater on in this movie I'm for the sweater.
Yeah
uh do.
Yes, 100%.
I wish I lived somewhere where I could wear sweaters regularly because I totally get theJohn McClane Die Hard 2 sweater, for sure.

(08:27):
Like, my problem is not the sweater, although let's get real, it is also the sweater.
But the central sin of this movie, and it's not just because of Stay True to hischaracter, it's because I think, as you will go through, it leads to a less interesting
story.
They have taken the everyman cop who, he's a cop, so it's not like he has zero skills, buthe's certainly not a terrorism expert in the first film.

(08:56):
And that gets...
turned 180 degrees in this movie and for reasons that don't always really make sense.
But in this movie, he is not the every man who is trying to muddle through.
is the expert who always knows best.
He's always right.
And everybody else who says anything is right.
It's just a series of characters who will say they will be wrong.

(09:20):
It's John McClane versus a series of characters who are just designed to be wrong.
I want to say, I think always, I've thought a lot about Die Hard 2 over the years, becausethere's some oddness to it.
I mean, from the get-go, a sequel to Die Hard was always going to be kind of a
difficult proposition because of the nature of that original movie.

(09:43):
It's different from say, Lethal Weapon, another iconic late 80s Joel Silver producedaction movie.
If there, Riggs and Murtaugh could simply be assigned to another case, they're cops, thatthey would have more cases.
I mean, you could just, it's like James Bond is always gonna have another assignment.
That's baked into the nature of the character.

(10:05):
But with Die Hard,
The plot of that original movie doesn't revolve around John McClane's duties as a cop.
And there's no way they were just gonna do a die-hard movie that was just like JohnMcClane as a detective solving a murder or something.
Like it had to be something on the scale or bigger than the first film, which basicallybrings to the idea of, what if the same thing happened to John McClane the next Christmas,

(10:32):
which is insane.
This is totally different though, because he's not on a plane, his wife's on a plane.
Yes.
oh
It's kind of like in the Halloween franchise how Michael is always transferred onHalloween.
oh
Why don't you transfer him on Easter for Christ's sake?
on Halloween Eve or something.

(10:53):
It does seem to be a terrible oversight.
Okay, what did this guy do again?
And when?
Okay, well, let's just give him a little treat.
he and the way that he just so casually rolls with it this time.
Yeah.
It's like they tried to soften the edges around what a bad idea that was by having hisconstant dialogue continue from the first film where he's always talking to himself like a

(11:16):
savant.
Like, I don't know what you call that.
Savant might not be the word, but just he's always babbling to himself.
And this film is no different, although the lines are much worse.
The writing in this film is it's like third grade versus the first film.
mean, really, really bad.
And, so we, I feel like that was part of their way to deal with that.

(11:40):
issue that we're talking about here is that, well, no, he, he is still kind of conflictedand maybe he doesn't have all the answers, but even his self-talk in this is confident for
the most part.
Yeah.
It's him just being like, yeah, well, I got to go in this tube again.
Burp, beep, joke.
And that's kind of how the whole thing plays out.
you could have done.
Like, and they didn't do they could have gone sort of the Jaws 2 road of John McClane hasbecome kind of super paranoid about terrorism, seeing it behind every corner like like Roy

(12:14):
Scheider with the you know, the sharks in Jaws 2.
I mean, eventually, obviously, you know, a shark does show up in that movie.
It wouldn't you know, you couldn't you couldn't call it Jaws 2 and have no shark show upjust be about his psychological
you know, his psychological makeup.
But like, there could have been something more where it was like, he's, you know, he'sthis guy, no, John, the same thing's not gonna happen again.

(12:38):
You don't know that.
Like, there's a whole thing you could have done with him, and I feel like it's just like,well, we're just not taking that road.
We want it to be snarky Bruce Willis.
Well, and because this is the change over into the nineties, it is baby's first meta jokesabout the genre of the movie you're in.
Cause obviously there was humor in, you know, Schwarzenegger's one liners or whatever inthe eighties.

(13:02):
is not humor incorporated into an action star movie in the U S is not a new thing, butthe, the, yeah, we know what we're doing.
Wink, wink.
We all know what we're doing.
Wink, wink that.
This is like the baby 90s.
You're six years from scream at this point.
It makes true.
That's absolutely true.
Die Hard 2 was written by Steven DeSouza, who co-wrote the first film, and DougRichardson.

(13:26):
Now Richardson was a first-time writer who was hired by producer Lawrence Gordon threeweeks into the first movie's theatrical run.
Gordon was so sure that the studio would want a second film, he hired a screenwriter evenbefore it was greenlit.
And it was Gordon who found the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager, which is about an NYPDofficer

(13:49):
who is waiting for his daughter's plane when terrorists seize control of JFK Airport'slanding systems, giving the airport less than an hour to meet their demands.
And it's funny how that just as with Nothing Lasts Forever, the novel upon which Die Hardwas based, the character in danger was changed from the protagonist's daughter to their
wife.
Richardson did the initial adaptation just as Jeb Stuart had done for the first filmbefore handing the script over to Steven D'Souza.

(14:15):
John McTiernan did not return to direct as he was directing a movie that I...
truly loved the hunt for red October at basically the same time.
So instead the directorial reins were turned over to Rennie Harlan whose film Deep BlueSea closed out our recent Get Me Another Jaws series.
It's funny, uh either Lawrence Gordon or Joel Silver, they must've been big Nightmare onElm Street fans because Harlan directed Nightmare on Elm Street 4 before doing Die Hard 2

(14:42):
and Stephen Hopkins who directed Nightmare on Elm Street 5
directed another high profile Gordon Silver produced sequel in 1990, the very underratedPredator 2.
And John McTiernan directed both of the original movies in those series.
It's it's very strange.
The John McTiernan nightmare on Elm Street sequel director connection.

(15:04):
Diar 2 brings back a fair amount of the cast of the first film, whether it makes sense ornot.
Like in addition to Bruce Willis, we have the amazingly quaffed Bonnie Bedelia, whoreturns as his wife Holly, as well as
William Atherton and Reginald Valjonson.
They are joined by William Saddler, John Amos, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, and FrancoNero.

(15:25):
And Die Hard 2, which carries the absolutely amazing subtitle Die Harder in the marketing,but not on the actual film, picks up with John McClain.
Either a year or two years after the first film, it's not entirely clear.
He has repaired his relationship with Holly for now.
and has transferred to the Los Angeles Police Department, but finds himself in Washington,DC with Holly's family for the holidays.

(15:53):
And all of this comes out in the opening scene where John McClain gets his in-laws cartowed by parking in front of Dulles Air.
And I think in a big swing against, remember at the end of the last episode, you broughtup the fact that people somehow, I feel unreasonably debate whether Die Hard's a Christmas
movie.
Yes.
I mean, and we all agreed, yeah, it's said it Christmas, there's a Christmas party, etcetera.

(16:18):
In this one, right from the get-go snow.
Yeah.
They are firmly, they're just planting you directly.
Now, if anyone debates this one being a Christmas movie, then we have real problems.
oh
It certainly is, although people don't watch it at Christmas in the same kind of, youknow, reverential way.
Well, we're going to discuss why exactly.

(16:40):
Yeah.
Over the next few minutes here.
But I love I want to start.
I really love the snowy atmosphere in this film.
Yes.
I'm a absolute nut for snowy movies, just period.
And I love that they didn't ever back away from it in this.
Yeah.
It apparently cost a ton to recreate snow for those scenes when they were shooting it.

(17:02):
It was apparently a logistical nightmare.
you feel it.
feels like they want you to feel.
Completely the illusion of this is a snowy, stormy Christmas is totally successful.
And you mentioned the car getting towed.
And I just want to pause for one moment just because this is illustrative of one of thekey differences between the two movies in the story.

(17:31):
In the first Die Hard, you had several small moments at the beginning that play as smallerthat pay off big time.
you got the John being nervous on the plane, the balls of his feet.
He's being told to go barefoot on the carpet, which will.
with your toes.
Yeah, which then means he is barefoot when the terrorists attack and then later in themovie, he can have glass broken and it makes things harder for him.

(17:55):
Even the fact of Argyle waiting to see if John is reconciling with Holly, if he's going tohave to go to the hotel or go home with her.
then Argyle, look, you get some comic relief out of it, but also he plays a key role atthe end in helping to stop the terrorists from getting away with it.
These things are little clockwork setups that do have actual

(18:16):
they're not just emotional, like fun payoffs.
They are also, um, paying off the ACE in the a story, right?
Now, John getting his car towed, it introduces us to some of the airport cops who aregoing to at least play a role in this story.
Uh, it is, you know, look, your mileage may vary, but it's a fun moment, right?

(18:36):
He's getting his in-laws car towed.
There's, know, but
really, even though they will bring this back later when it turns out this cop is relatedto a different cop and it's like, hey, you know, uh, we've been beefing this whole movie,
but here, my brother in law or whatever is the one who towed your car.
Yeah.
Except it doesn't matter at all.
No, there is no significance for the story at large.

(18:59):
May you know, look again, your mileage may vary the, the, it, when it's called back lateron, you might get some enjoyment out of it.
You might think it's mildly amusing, but it,
doesn't have the clockwork precision of paying off of the setups in the first movie.
Well, it's funny you should say that because I spent a long time, like I watched thismovie and I spent a long time trying to figure out what is wrong with this movie.

(19:23):
Because there's things that are not wrong with this movie.
Like the action sequences themselves, I actually think are really good and really welldone, like in and of themselves.
yeah, Rennie Harlan can direct the hell out of an action.
And it's not the actors either.
There's some really good actors who give great little, like Dennis Franz is great in this,John Amos is great in this.

(19:47):
There's great little character performance.
I'm like, what is, there's something about it.
It's not even the fact that it's the stupid, how can the same thing happen to the same guytwice?
Because here's the truth.
If this movie was really awesome, we would be able to overlook
the silliness of the premise.
We'd just be like, you know what?

(20:08):
It's fine.
But God, if this movie was as good as the first, which is highly unlikely, buthypothetically, we would overlook the whole Christmas terrorist happening again thing.
So I spent a lot of time.
I went into my deep meditation chamber, my sensory deprivation tank to really meditate onthe problem of Die Hard 2.

(20:35):
And when I emerged, I realized what it was.
John McClane, until the last scene of the movie, John McClane has no effect on this moviewhatsoever.
Like, it's the thing that people joke about in Indiana Jones and not affecting Raiders ofthe Lost Ark, it's actually true of John McClane in Die Hard 2.

(20:57):
And as we go through, I'll point, like...
The villain's plan doesn't get altered by him at all.
He doesn't even really inconvenience them.
Like, yeah, he kills a couple of guys, but they have so many guys, it doesn't reallymatter.
And even when he does kill them, they've still accomplished their task.
It is not until the final sequence that he actually has any effect on the plot whatsoever.

(21:17):
Yeah, that absolutely true.
ah Which is weird, because that would seem to run counter with he is presented as theexpert who knows everything.
Right?
It's almost like that's why he can't he can't do something that's half right or halfwrong.
And so it's just he's doing the right thing sometimes.
But the terrorists are even more writer.
I don't even know.
It's like they've taken the bat the villain plot being good, like too far.

(21:42):
Right.
We talked about in the first one, it's like, oh, watching these, it's like competenceporn, watching these really skilled villains do their thing.
Well, here they just, like, they have a plan that until the, again, until the finalmoments would have played out exactly the same if John McClane had done nothing.
And I think it contributes to this movie's listlessness.

(22:04):
Like, I was surprised at how kind of sluggish, especially in the first act.
this movie is.
It really, I didn't remember it that way, but when I was looking at it this time, it waslike, man.
Well, I think that's a revelation, Chris.
And also the other thing that the movie has working against it in relation to thecharacter is that he's in all these different scenarios, but he's, you never feel like

(22:27):
he's in danger.
No, no.
Like the stick, there's not stakes in everything because okay, he drops his gun on aconveyor belt while he gets it a minute later.
It's when he pops up somewhere and about he's about to be run over.
Well, he gets out of the way just in time.
It's there's there aren't moments of him being hung up and really in peril.
throughout the entirety of the film.
I think that also dovetails with the presentation of him as the guy who just knows what todo in every scenario.

(22:54):
is fascinating to think about him really having no influence over the course of eventshere if he wasn't in the film.
I think that's very, very interesting.
And Justin, what you were talking about is visually represented in how not messed up JohnMcClane gets in this movie.
And he's a little smear of dirt, a little dirt, a little blood.

(23:17):
But if you take a still of John McClane at the end of the first movie and compare it tothe still of how he looks at the end of this movie, he looks like an untouchable hero
who's got a little...
He's done up more like Ken Wall toward the end of Taking the Beverly Hills.
Totally
What's interesting, and we'll get there when we get there, is our second movie hero isalso fairly untouchable, but it works.

(23:42):
And I will get into that then.
for this character in this scenario, it just feels like it doesn't play.
Yeah, yeah.
So John McClane, he's at the airport, his pager starts beeping and, you know, yeah, he'soff to find a payphone, which if you're of a certain age, you don't even know that,
understand the sentence that I just said, a pager and a payphone.

(24:03):
But I want to do, let's establish something right now though for the remainder of theduration of this episode.
Any listener out there who has any kind of erotic attachment to phones, this is thehottest double bill you could probably ever have.
There are phones in nearly every scene in both these movies and they're picked up, they'refondled, they're touched, they're dropped.

(24:28):
If you are in the phones that are-
I really didn't start thinking about it until the second movie was going on.
like, Jesus, what did Chris pick this?
Does Chris have some like weird tape collection of old erotic phone stuff?
I wasn't aware this was a thing, but now I just assume everything is a thing for somebodysomewhere.
Everything is a thing for somebody, so peace!

(24:48):
phones are in the Mile High Club too.
They are and they're everywhere.
There are phones in places that I have questions about and we'll get there.
anyway, if you like phones, take off your pants now, people.
What's amazing about this movie is that it is a snapshot to me of the world right beforethings really started to change.

(25:09):
It's all pagers and fax machines.
There's no internet that's not far off.
like the last, it's the last photo of sort of the analog world before things reallystarted to accelerate as you get into the 90s.
And you know, it's just like, it's pages and fax machines, man.
It's right before the change, which just makes it sort of this,

(25:32):
this unique little picture.
The other thing about this movie that I noticed, we got a ton of exposition in this moviethrough news broadcasts or news reporters.
Like it's like Halloween 2 in that regard.
That's in my notes.
Yeah, like in my notes.
We you we learned that one General Ramon Esperanza is headed to Dallas Airport by militaryplane in order to be taken into US custody on charges of drug trafficking.

(25:58):
Shades of Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian strongman who was a one-time US ally.
But it brings up a question here.
And this was a question I can't believe I never thought about.
I really thought about this movie in ways I had never done so before.
And I've seen this movie many times.
I've owned
multiple versions of this movie on multiple formats.

(26:20):
So proud of you.
But like, here's my question.
This guy, why is this guy flying into a commercial airport?
Like he's on a military flight, FM1, foreign military one.
Couldn't they have just flown him into Andrew's airport space?
Just lie back and die hard, Chris.
Just lie back and die hard.

(26:41):
And also we need to talk about this airport guys, because when he first walked in, I'mlike, oh, airport.
The way this airport is presented in this movie is like it's an episode of wings or in mynotes, which is a bit more of an obscure reference, the night flyer, which I do too.
I'm obsessed with that movie.

(27:03):
He flies in that film in night flyer.
He flies into these little tiny airports and the whole film like.
is set around and in these little baby airports.
And so this whole movie, I'm like, what a quaint little airport this is.
And then at some point someone mentions Dulles maybe 20 minutes into it.
I'm like, wait, what?
They're making this out to be Dulles airport?

(27:23):
you, it's like the most bumpkin outfit.
And maybe I'm just remembering Dulles wrong from when I've flown there a couple of times,but I think it's hilarious how they've presented this airport in what was clearly.
Probably some regional thing somewhere.
hope you have notes on this, Chris, on the reality of this.
I did no research on that side of
They didn't use one airport for the like some of it was shot at LAX.

(27:45):
Some of it was shot on sound stages.
uh Like a lot of the outdoor stuff was shot, think in like Colorado or that sort of thing.
was kind of shot all over the place.
This movie cost a ton.
Like this was one of the most expensive movies at this point.
And it was just like, apparently the problem was snow, like getting the snow and it wasn'tsnowing and they needed the snow.

(28:08):
It was a whole thing.
Which means that the production of the movie is a lot like the villains plan.
It was entirely weather dependent, which is another problem by the way.
Like this plan literally doesn't work if it's a clear day, even a clear night.
Like it doesn't work because they, they, yeah, sure.
They turn off the, the ground, you know, the landing lights, the, on the, on the runways,but they don't turn off all of Northern Virginia, you know?

(28:33):
And if the whole idea is to trick this plane into, you know, not knowing where groundlevel is.
They could not have pulled off this plan if there hadn't been a massive snowstorm at thesame time that this general is being flown in.
Yeah, they also couldn't have pulled this plan off period.
I texted you while watching it in a post 9 11 world.

(28:55):
Like we know what happens if there's if airports shut down.
They reroute you.
Yeah, there is no world in which they go.
I'm sorry.
These 10 planes were already on approach.
We just have to have them circle until they die.
There's absolutely no way in the entire country we could reroute them.
That is not true.

(29:16):
And look, I know
I'm that's not even my beef with diehard two, but as long as we're talking about howterrible the plan is, uh, but, also how flawless the plan is, uh, that's really the
problem with it is that Hans in the first movie, his plan is flawless and it's actually iswhere it's hard to present me a villain who is a mastermind and it's flawless, but you can

(29:43):
see all of these obvious holes in it.
Like I can watch and enjoy a movie where a villain's plan is ridiculous.
But if the movie is ridiculous, but this movie is telling me that essentially Oliver Northwent insane and is, as you said, going to save Manuel Noriega or the leader of the, you

(30:03):
know, uh, the Nicaraguan rebels.
don't even know.
Right.
Right.
And so it's supposed to be all this hyper competence, but as you have rightly pointed out,Chris, it does not quite play like.
I have to mention that because you did bring up the country, Esperanza is from, and Iwould be remiss if I didn't point this out, the fictional country of Val Verde, which is

(30:27):
frequently used in Stephen D'Souza's work.
So remember last episode, we established that the Die Hard series and the Speed series andRicochet all share the same universe.
This movie then loops in Commando.
as well as the TV series, Super Carrier and Adventure Inc.
are all part of the shared diehard Steven D'Souza verse.

(30:53):
That's the same country that was in Commando, Val Verde.
uh You mentioned the villain and it's worth talking about the villain because given howiconic Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber instantly became, they are determined here to try and
make
their own memorable villain and they certainly give him a memorable introduction, that'sfor sure.

(31:15):
The villain is Colonel William Stewart played by William Sadler who is introduced in ahotel room doing Tai Chi stark naked.
I mean, you're not going to forget that opening.
mean, you're not going to forget that intro, that's for sure.
uh And Sadler's good in the movie.
again, what do you think?

(31:38):
The actors are not.
a military guy who would only have that one vase.
I mean he's no Hans Gruber, let's be clear, but I think he's good!
He's not the problem!
If you're comparing the sort of mastermind bad guys in the two films that we're talkingabout today, it is absolutely night and day.
And William Sadler in this, I mean, it gets to the point where I have in my notes, I am sosick of seeing his face because every time they cut to him, it's the same kind of like, I

(32:09):
don't know even know how to describe it.
uh It's just this face of intense consternation.
You know, it's it's up, you he's got a big job.
It's got a lot going on this guy
And it is interesting.
They do attempt to differentiate the villains from the first movie.
Yes.
With this one in that Hans is essentially only professional cold calculating.

(32:34):
Right.
And he wants the money in this movie.
It is ideological is the villain motivation.
It is not for money.
yeah.
Yeah.
And they do try to toy with the idea that he's a little bit crazy.
Yeah.
But.
the military hyper competence comes in.
They never quite go full Colonel Kurtz when it matters.

(32:57):
They'll do it like in this introduction is a little bit crazy.
Although I wish I was like, it does set up that you're going to get an amazing like KungFu and it does not happen.
ah But to Justin's point about the night and day and this movie takes place all at nightfor the most part.
And the next one will take place mostly during the day.

(33:19):
But both movies attempt to have the insane villain, ah but the next one, they let it, theyjust let their freak flag fly.
my goodness.
Whereas here, I think the military thing constrains it a little.
The other big difference between this movie and the first movie is we noted hownon-political the first Die Hard movie is.
This movie is very political.

(33:41):
Like the villains here are clearly of the far right wing nutcase variety.
that's, I just think it's an interesting differentiation between the two.
You know, so it's just something to note.
McLean eventually does find a payphone to call back the beeper and it's Holly.
Calling from the plane.
She's on the air phone calling from the plane just to say hi.

(34:04):
Guys, do you know how expensive of a call that would be?
Just like, you don't have any news.
You he knows you're coming in on a plane.
Why she would beep him at the airport.
It's, I mean, I know she does well at the Nakatomi Corporation, but geez, you know, that'sjust an expensive call.
And by the way, I'm not even sure McLean would be able to call her back from a landline onthe ground.

(34:26):
I don't think it works.
When they had air phones, I don't even think it worked that.
My first notes were, was this a thing?
And then I got to thinking, I'm like, it was.
I remember those phones being in the back of the headrest in front of you and it had thecredit card slot in it.
I never saw a single person use one.
I mean, even pre-internet and all of that, it's like, well, you knew when you were goingto land if your family was waiting for you.

(34:49):
Now, as soon as the plane lands, everyone's, you see everyone's heads go down.
It's like this ceremonial kind of holy church of praying all of a sudden to the devices assoon as a plane lands because I need to let them know that I'm here.
People hop on their phone and start making calls that we all get the pleasure of hearing.
I hate all of that.

(35:10):
Flying is the worst.
Flying is terrible.
It's a filthy environment too.
wait.
But the...
The air phone thing, this is just the beginning of throughout both of these films.
yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.
ah I do want to point out a little error in this movie, and this is an error I noticed,think when we first, when dad and I first saw the movie, McLean is at Dulles Airport in

(35:37):
Virginia, but the phone he's talking on says.
bell.
m
Come on.
And Holly has a conversation with an older woman at the seat next to her who wasapparently able to bring a taser on the plane.
Like of all the things in this movie, this might be actually the thing that stretchescredibility the most, but it's a taser that will play in the role.

(35:57):
It's Chekov's taser.
Now did you notice she was reading a magazine that was folded open to the Lethal Weapon 2ad, very prominently displayed right there.
So Mel Gibson is in Die Hard 2.
That's true.
That's true.
That is in the Die Hard universe.
The Leave the Weapon series are movies in the Die Hard universe.

(36:22):
are not actually real world events.
you could not have, theoretically, you could not have a John McClane, uh Riggs andMurtaugh crossover.
That could not have been accidental though, because of how prominent that ad is whenthey're having the conversation.
were- Right.
Right.

(36:43):
And Holly being on the plane with that, uh with the other passenger talking to her.
um This is a, what is now classic.
think audiences would recognize remixing beats from the first thing in the sequel.
Yeah.
This happens all the time.
um And it's putting a different character in the same beat or the same character in a, thesame beat, but slightly altering it.

(37:06):
And in this one again, you, you know, they set up the taser and that will come into playlater, although.
it doesn't matter.
And we'll get to that when we get there.
But it's essentially a meaningless setup when it comes to what is happening with thestory.
Exactly, yeah.
We did mention John McClane's sweater, and I do want to mention it again, because it's agood-looking sweater.

(37:29):
uh I mentioned last week that the tank top undershirt has become John McClane's sort ofunofficial uniform, but that doesn't really get solidified to the third film.
Here, he's just in this really comfy-looking sweater for much of the movie, and then laterhe's got a flannel shirt underneath.
It's just, it's, you know, I like that sweater, man.

(37:50):
It's like knives out territory.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the colonels men, take over this air, this church on the edge of the airport propertythat will allow them to tap in, tap into and take over the airport's communication and
landing system.
I do want to talk about this church.
As soon as I saw that, was like, give me more of this.

(38:12):
The shit it is so cute.
And the snow falling in this church, every time they cut to a wide shot of the church, Iam in heaven.
And I was like, you know, those kind of ASMR videos that people create on YouTube that arefour hours long of something to help you fall asleep or whatever.
Give me this church with the snow falling and just the, just the ambient sounds of maybe alittle wind.

(38:36):
I would be, it's blissful for me, this church.
It's so perfect and really Midwestern, the way that the church is designed.
And I was like, I'm so happy this is here.
Thankfully, they get a lot of that church because they basically take it over as theircommand center.
They basically set up a duplicate air traffic control station.

(38:59):
uh But that church is fantastic.
And in the snow, does look great.
It's like, oh, I want to spend Christmas somewhere like that.
and then to see that this guy lives there.
guy lives there!
Not for long, but,
I want that.
And also his death establishes just how brutal a lot of this movie is going to be forhorror fans out there.

(39:21):
There's actually quite a bit to chew on and die hard to.
There is, is, I mean, I'll make a comparison to a part two we talked about just a couple,just very recently.
In Diyar 2 kind of is to Diyar, what Halloween 2 is to the first Halloween in terms oflike upping the gore.

(39:43):
there's just a lot more like brutal shots, like the icicle through the eye later, like,which you get twice, like they cut back to it.
It's really kind of, it's really something.
I also want to mention, Colonel Stewart's got his group of men who are not nearly asinteresting and varied as the terrorist group in the first Die Hard.

(40:04):
But there are some very recognizable faces, including, if you look, Robert Patrick, JohnLeguizombo, and Bondi Curtis-Hall.
Again, the actors are fine, it's just that they don't, they're given those charactermoments that the group in the first movie...
half, like the bit with the candy bar and that sort of thing.
So it's just, they feel, and maybe that's the nature of it, because they're all militaryguys, they feel more generic, even though there's some really good recognizable actors.

(40:34):
Well, the introduction to all these guys is this very strange coordinated hotel doorclosing parade where they all emerge from their hotel rooms at exactly the same moment.
they're, their doors all closed at the same time and they're moving like a, like a drum,like a marching band down the hallway in this hotel.

(40:55):
And I'm thinking this is the most coordinated outfit I've ever encountered.
And when I saw what I thought was like with Zamo, I pulled up.
IMDB and I'm like, God, is it?
I, yeah, it is him.
And then I start scrolling and the list of actors that are in this movie is a mile long.
It's something going down.
is outrageous how many people are in this.

(41:16):
And one of the things I think people who are from this time will enjoy is that you'reseeing familiar faces of the era throughout the film as it continues to move on.
So it isn't just return characters from the first.
There's also just a lot of sort of.
comfy faces because this was the last gasp of the character actor era, which ultimatelywas killed off in the same decade.

(41:39):
But here, man, it's a packed ross.
It's a peg.
And that moment where they're doing the walk down the hall, they're all coming out thedoor.
Clearly they wanted to mimic the bit in Die Hard where all of the terrorists are coming,there's that cool walk, they're walking into the building.
And it kind of illustrates the silliness of this movie.

(42:01):
In Die Hard, they all, with the exception of the two guys who go into the lobby, they allarrive at the same time.
So they open up the truck and they're all walking out at the same time.
So they're all sort of walking together, kind of makes sense.
Here, did they have a plan to coordinate when they were opening the doors?

(42:22):
Like, were they sitting behind the doors waiting?
I gotta wait till I hear the next door open, then I could come out and then close.
Like, it's ridiculous.
saved money with the 11 p.m.
Checkout time.
They had to get there right at 11.
This actually had nothing to do with their plot to take over the airport.
And to the point that we've been hammering this whole time, it doesn't mean anythingbecause they're not, they're not going somewhere to all like meet in the lobby.

(42:47):
They're just, but they're like standing next to each other in the hallway and getting onan elevator.
So there was no reason for them to all come out at precisely the right, the same moment.
And then when they get to the airport in a lot of movies, the way they handle this, whensomeone has a bomb or whatever, they try to blend in.
These guys are so obviously criminal elements and.

(43:08):
When they're walking to the airport, all stand out.
They're all looking around all shifty eyed and they have matching packages.
is like they were all at one of those sex toy parties and they all took home like a carepackage in the same little bag and they're walking down the hallway together.
mean, it's bombs, but it's very much the same.

(43:29):
It's not really very different than that.
hurts it because as you say, Justin, to the audience, it is so obvious, which then whenJohn McClain, it's a twofold problem.
Cause when he sees these guys in the airport before any real, has happened, John McClainis instantly suspicious.
So eh it makes him less smart by how obvious it is, but also it, there's no reason for himto actually be suspicious.

(43:57):
It's like it's imparting John McClain with
these insane, like, psychic powers of terrorists, Spidey-Sense, that, like, he just wouldnot have, having done one event, a year ago.
And so it's, like, it's problematic in many different ways.
And he's leering at them.

(44:18):
I mean, he's kind of the weirdo in the room because he's just staring at these men at thistable, just watching them and smoking his cigarette in the airport, which who misses that,
right?
And, then he just starts following him around and then he starts poking around.
if you just not, how much of a problem with this have been, if he just left, he didn'tneed to involve himself in all of this.

(44:39):
does follow, sees these guys, he's suspicious.
And I noted that he's like suspicious for no reason.
it's just like, it's, but like he follows them into the back and he get, you know, he goesin and sees them.
And then, and then we have like the first big fight of the movie, which is back in theluggage area.
And you know, it's, there's the luggage on conveyor belts and John McClane loses his gunand he uses a golf club and all that sort of stuff.

(45:02):
And he kills one of the guys, but the other guy gets away.
But here's the thing.
they were there installing like the key component piece to allow them to allow the badguys to tap into the tower.
Like, and that still happened.
Like John McClane didn't prevent that from happening.
If John McClane just sat there in the cafe smoking his cigarette, aside from one terroristbeing dead and they have a lot of guys, so it's not really a thing, nothing would have

(45:29):
been different.
It didn't impede their plan even remotely.
And even drop, well, first of all, the action on a very slow moving conveyor belt is justfunny.
There's a lot of things in this movie that are just funny that way.
But when to the, when he drops his gun, you're thinking, it's going to end up in someother part of the room or on the plane.
Maybe he'll pick it up later.
Well that he does get it back in pretty short order.

(45:52):
But the real problem here is that what he sees after he drops his gun is a set of golfclubs going up a conveyor belt near him that are not.
there's no bag over the top of them at all.
It's just open in the luggage.
And I'm thinking if you're serious enough to travel with golf clubs, A, you're probablyrich.

(46:13):
B, you're gonna know that you can't just let them fly free in the luggage compartment withyour clubs falling out and rolling and being broken.
And it just makes no sense that they would have been open on this conveyor belt in thefirst place.
One of the easy conveniences that he encounters in this film and that's
to my point earlier that he never really is in too much danger because there's always thesolution right in front of him.

(46:38):
Absolutely.
From front to back in the film.
Absolute.
And at the beginning of this, when he follows those guys, he goes to report it to thecops, his suspicions that are in that little airport bar restaurant area.
Yeah.
And then he sees one of the cops was the jerk who towed the car.
And then he just goes, nothing.
Yeah.
And he then goes like, I will follow the guys that I think are terrorists and go in theback of the airport and do, you know, do the big fight.

(47:02):
But I'm like, that runs so counter to the guy that we saw in the first movie who did foran hour, tried to call for backup.
Everything.
Essentially.
Absolutely.
Even when the guys were idiots and he knew they were idiots, he still was calling forbackup and one.
100%.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's absolutely 100%.
I think your comparison to Conan the Barbarian versus Conan the Destroyer is actuallyreally apt.

(47:29):
Like, it's just like, I think that hits the nail on the head.
Back on Holly's plane, we're reintroduced to a character from the first film, LA newsreporter, Dick Thornburg.
happens to be on the same flight as Holly.
Now this, again, chalk this under, I never thought about this before, but they apparentlydidn't notice each other in the airport or as they were boarding, but more to the point.

(47:57):
She does see him when he's being moved back from first class to business class by a flightattendant.
And of course he's bitching and moaning that he does these, know, the cattle car, firstclass, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But here's something I never thought of until now.
They say they were overbooked in first class and that's why he's being moved back tobusiness.
Okay, sure.
But why is this happening now?

(48:18):
Like they've clearly been in the air for a significant amount of time.
if that was gonna happen, if he was gonna get bumped out of first, wouldn't that havehappened on the ground?
Doesn't everyone have to be in their seats for takeoff, even in the nineties?
It's a small thing, I know, but I never thought about it before and now it-

(48:39):
really, really bothers me.
It's weird.
After killing the guy in the luggage area, McClain is brought up to see the airport'schief of police, Carmine Lorenzo, played by former Hill Street Blues and Beverly Hills
Buntz star Dennis Franz, who is a few years away from returning to television for hisaward-winning role on NYPD Blue.

(49:00):
And Carmine is going to be McClain's foil for most of this movie, as he doesn't want thisguy from LA.
It's way he says it, L-A, to be fucking things up in his little pond.
ah It's like the Italian American version of Dwayne Robinson from the first movie.
But I actually really think Dennis Franz is great here.

(49:22):
Because he's funny.
It's some of the humor that plays the best for me and he is doing it straight.
It's it's the fact that he is, uh you know, getting apoplectic about every little thing.
Yeah, like he's just he's so furious at this whole thing ah You know and they have thatwhole conversation McLean leaves him like he goes and get out of my office and and McLean

(49:47):
leaves him with that so sick burn of What sets off the metal detectors faster the lead inyour ass or the shit in your brains guys?
The answer is clearly the less
Shit isn't made of- Yes!
Shit is not made of
Set off metal detectors?
What kind of a sick burn is that, McClane?
Come on!
This is just a clear illustration of the writing difference between these two films.

(50:12):
And all of his one-liners in this are just groaners.
Growners and a lot of them feel ADR'd.
Like a lot of them said, just as you've cut away from McLean.
But in order to bring in another returning cast member from the original movie, John Faxis the dead guy's fingerprints to Sergeant Al Powell in LA, who is now his coworker.

(50:35):
This feels like a more organic inclusion than Dick Thornburg.
Like, this is now his work friend and he can call him up, even though he's in LA, to dothis thing.
to find out who's this guy that he killed.
Reginald Valjonson's great, that's all fine.
He's much less central than Dick Thornburg, which is just, it's ridiculous that he'd be onthe same plate and that he wouldn't.

(50:59):
The lady behind the facts counter who is all over John McLean.
is so funny.
She's really, and I kind of love that whole energy.
It's one of the few little just sort of colorful character moments in that she wants to,you know, take him to get a drink and he, you know, he wiggles the wedding ring and just
the fax, ma'am, just the fax, ma'am.

(51:20):
She's got good hair.
You like just the facts man that I thought
I can, you know what, it's a dumb joke, but in the context of not like, you know, hey,you're a nice lady with some good hair, but I'm not going to cheat on my wife.
It's that sort of dumb joke I can get.
It's much better than what sets off the metal detectors faster, lead or poop.

(51:41):
John McClane is a dad, he made a dad joke.
I buy it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But his interaction with Powell offered us wake up and smell the nineties, which was myquote at the start of it, which I thought was great.
Wake up and smell the nineties.
And then in the middle, like before we get to the counter interaction with that girl andjust the facts, ma'am barf, there's this whole thing with the air traffic control squad,

(52:06):
which is led by, um, what's that actor's name?
Um, Fred Thompson, would leave us.
Senator.
Right.
Right.
So he, he's giving an instruction to his team and he couldn't be more vague in thatmoment.
He's like, well, we better circle the birds so the diapers don't get too full.

(52:27):
The Merkin parade starts the Mississippi and ends at the Columbus.
It was what, how does, like, and no one asked any questions.
They've been for him for a while.
They're a well-oiled machine.
What he says, it's unbelievable.
Oh, great.
It's funny, and later John McClane is able to get into the tower somehow, like he's ableto just kind of walk in there and he's there when the terrorists make their move of taking

(52:56):
over the airport's landing and communications and stranding all the planes that are pastthe outer marker in the sky, including of course, Holly plane.
And, you know, I mean, as Rob, as you point out, they would divert the plane somewhereelse.
Like, I mean,
There are other airports in the, there's two other airports in the Washington DC areaalone.

(53:17):
Like there's national and then there's Baltimore, there's BMI.
And it's just like, why?
Like it's ridiculous.
It is just ridiculous.
Even in the pre 9 11 era, would not just let those planes just circle till they droppedout of this.
Well, there's also a lot of things happening in this where I don't know if it is realjargon for air traffic controllers, cause we don't have any now anymore, but the, when we

(53:43):
are up there, the run, when the runway lights start to shut down, art Evans, AKA the air,like the cop from fright night, tells his team cold code yellow people.
I've never heard code yellow before, although later we do get, we get that later.
Yeah.
Code red comes a little bit.
Right.
So.

(54:03):
Everyone up there, all of a sudden, when he says code yellow, it's like this franticmontage of different people in the tower saying things that are happening.
This is going down.
This is whatever.
And then some lights are still on in the background in some shots, even though they'vebeen turned off out on the runways, which I thought was great.
And then we arrive at a moment that I had to research guys because we cut back to oursnowy church and like Leguizamo and his cohorts are cutting the power and

(54:32):
working through the different whatever.
They open a power line in the ground.
Yep.
And then someone with a chainsaw starts chainsawing into the power line.
And then you see someone grab an ax and swing at a different power line.
And that got me to thinking how a chainsaw that is the, that was your plan.
And so I did some research here, guys.

(54:53):
Oh, chainsawing.
This is chainsawing.
A power line would result in catastrophic deadly outcomes, including the execution, fireand explosion.
A chainsaw provides a direct conductive path to the ground for the extremely high voltagein the power line which would kill you instantly.
The immediate and deadly consequences are severe electrocution.

(55:14):
When a chainsaw blade cuts into a live power line, the massive electrical current willflow through the metal chain and bar, through the saw's engine and handles, and directly
into the body.
The immense shock would cause immediate death.
Intense electrical arcs.
The moment the saw breaks the line, the electricity will leap across the newly created airgap, forming a brilliant hot and writhing plasma arc.

(55:36):
arc can be- arc?
Yeah, that's right.
The arc can be many feet long, enveloping and incinerating anything in its path, includingthe operator.
It can also lead to explosion and fire and then just general destruction to anyone who'saround.
So if these guys have this military precision,
in their background and they have this whole thing mapped out down to rigging theirelectronics for if they get caught or whatever.

(56:04):
Why would they, why would any part of it hinge on someone using a chainsaw to cut a powerline when they can just so easily shut it off?
Cause the whole plan was to shut things off.
good.
I can absolutely answer this question.
And it relates to our evergreen question of what matters about an initial hit movie andwhat do the people that follow it think matters?

(56:26):
Right.
Now, I don't think this was a conscious decision because it's too weird and small.
If the beginning of Die Hard when the terrorists are first executing their plan and takingover what happens?
have a terrorist chainsaw a bunch of tubie things.
Carl, Carl, Carl, so the other guy's working to finish whatever he's working on and Carl'sjust cutting across and it's great.

(56:46):
So I have a feeling that somewhat, it just felt right.
A chainsaw in here on an unconscious level.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so all you know, the bottom line is these terrors, it's not a great plan.
Like, again, if there had been no snow, their entire plan is kaput.

(57:11):
And they leave this church where this is the hub of all of their activity.
And it's where the leader of the thing is stationed.
It's guarded by one guy.
One guy.
People.
Do you think there's a version of Die Hard 2 where you remake it, but you cross it withWhite Christmas?
So it's the bad guys arrive at Dulles and there's no snow and they're like, what are wegonna do?

(57:35):
And then they sing and dance.
love it.
And then they invoke the snow through their show.
with chainsaws in their hands.
my god.
The demand of course from Colonel Stewart is that the plane coming in carrying GeneralEsperanza be able to land at a runway of their choosing and then they will be flown out on
a 747 provided by the airport and if they don't comply they'll start to crash planes.

(57:58):
I did want to point out that we get a title drop here of the novel as Stewart says, aplane will be landing here in 58 minutes.
Like, you know, that's a deep cut there for those who are
paying attention to the little box of credits below on the poster where it says, inspiredby the novel 58.

(58:19):
Maybe that was contractual.
Like they had to include that.
McClain, along with the reporter Sam Coleman, is escorted out of the tower but overhearsthe chief engineer Barnes talking about the Annex Skywalk, which is this area under
construction.
They might have equipment there that could contact the planes.
So, McClain climbs out to the top of the elevator and he makes his way through the bowelsof the airport and we get the movie's signature line.

(58:45):
happened to the same guy twice.
He meets Marvin the janitor who kind of apparently lives in the airport.
oh Cool record collection and you know like he's kind of this movie's uh argyle a littlebit but like you know you know the very
have they have him drive John and Holly away.

(59:06):
Yes.
For no it does.
It makes zero sense.
But he's in that argyle role.
Yeah, but he lives, he helps McClane get out to the annex.
If this movie were made, if we remade this movie now, McClane would have thought theyheard someone say Anakin Skywalker and it would have been a whole thing of figuring out
that what it actually meant.
Oh, annex Skywalker.

(59:27):
That would have been, that would have been the, gag.
That's what I kept hearing the whole movie.
Every time they brought it up, my brain did that.
Stuart, although he is not, you know, he didn't really think through the chainsaw aspectof his plan.
He did think that they might use the transmitter at the annex skywalk.
He sends them team of men there to intercept Barnes and the SWAT team accompany him.

(59:50):
And again, the gun the gunfight at the annex skywalk to me is one of the highlights of thefilm.
It is it is a genuinely good action sequence that as Rob, as you point out, Rennie Harlanknows how to stage an accident sequence.
And this is one of, it's the time between action sequences that kill this movie.
The actual action sequences are really good.

(01:00:10):
And one of his guys is Terminator 2.
Yes.
Yes.
He's going through there.
We get the ventilation duct right then.
Right.
to that.
Fright Night is laying on the ground just yelling as Terminator 2 is just laying waste toanything he can shoot at, which there's a lot of that in this movie.
There's a lot of flailing shooting, I call it.
Yeah.
Where we're just going to just let it fly.

(01:00:31):
Keep my finger on the trigger.
oh
they're on the snowmobiles later, it's insane.
that is fucking hilarious when we get to the snowmobiles.
But so in this gunfight here where everybody's, I would guess maybe 10 feet away from eachother.
The only people getting shot are the bad guys and 50 % of them I counted fall in slowmotion for some reason.

(01:00:51):
And then we get the shooting through the table call back to the first film up through thescaffold, the scaffolding and when the scaffolding falls on the bad guy who fell off of
it.
And I think as he falls, goes, no, or something like that.
Like he says something like, Oh man.
And then the dummy that's under the scaffolding is not even dressed.

(01:01:14):
It's like they just had to grab something fast.
can see the duct tape around its neck onto a dummy body.
is spectacular when that falls.
And, meanwhile, fright nights just over there screaming.
He's just laying there.
for this
And there's a Trump escalator moment that happens not once, but twice in this sequencewhere if you just turn off the escalator, it will give pause to everyone on it and it will

(01:01:40):
cause them alarm that happens twice.
And this is probably the fourth time in my notes.
When we cut to Sadler, I say I'm sick of Sadler's face because this is all happening soquickly.
The dummy is what makes it amazing though.
And then T2 dies.
Yeah.
Like you assume he's going to be one of the main dude.
Nope.
Nope.
Yeah.

(01:02:01):
And this whole action sequence is you get so many things that are illustrative of takingthe wrong lessons from the first movie.
So things that Die Hard 2 thinks you need in a Die Hard are John McClane talking tohimself, even though in the first movie, he's been alone for a long time and he's in
shock.
so I buy it a little bit more.

(01:02:22):
Whereas here, it's like he's been with people the whole time.
He's alone by himself for like one second, and then he's going to do the same things.
Air duct you have to have as well.
And then you mentioned the, you know, we're going to do the reverse of shooting downthrough a table.
It's shooting up through the walkway.
But as cool as this gun battle is action wise, it is also illustrative of something thatthey missed from the first movie, which is this John McClain has a single pistol and is

(01:02:53):
facing off with, I don't know how many bad guys who all have automatic.
automatic weapons, yeah.
And now he is unbelievable action hero where they're like, brrrr

(01:03:21):
with a gun that never runs out of bullets.
runs out of bullets.
And when he does dispatch the bad guys, but then there's the, the whole point was to getBarnes, the engineer to the transmitter that he might be able to contact the planes,
they've rigged the transmitter to blow anyway.
all of, if John McClane never showed up, Barnes would have probably died too.

(01:03:45):
That's not great, you know, I mean, but like fundamentally the villain's plan never wouldhave changed.
Nothing would have changed.
And then as a response, know, William Sadler's like, you didn't obey my orders, I'm goingto crash a plane and we get the whole plane crashing sequence.
Again, presuming that they would have always tried to use the Annex Skywalk, all of thatwould have happened anyway.

(01:04:08):
like literally, John McClane, aside from killing some bad guys of what seems to be aninnumerable number, like there was a very clear number of bad guys in the first die hard.
It's almost as you could count them and count them down here.
It's like a whole, it's a whole army.
can be a whole, you know, who knows?
But like none of it matters.
None of it matters.

(01:04:30):
You know, and then Courtauld Stewart decides he's going to crash a plane.
He resets ground level minus 200 feet.
So the planes think they are 200 feet higher than they actually are.
This scene is actually, I really like this scene as an, I love McClain going out there onthe runway with torches to try and.
Like it's ridiculous.
It's hilarious.
I love it.

(01:04:50):
He's doing everything in this movie.
He does everything.
And in the first movie, he's relatively, I say here, he's just with people through most ofit.
But like, here's the thing is all this would have happened anyway.
John McClane, despite his efforts out there on the runway, the plane still crashes.
It's just like, it's just, the plane, by the way, uh the Windsor Airlines flight pilotedby Chief O'Brien from Star Trek, the next generation in Deep Space Nine, crashes into the

(01:05:19):
runway.
And it's just like, it's...
I mean, it's crazy.
I mean, the plane crash is amazing.
Like in terms of special effects and the models and stuff, it all looks great, but holyshit.
We get another player arriving on the scene with the arrival of Major Grant, the lategreat John Amos as Major Grant who was presented as another foil for McClain and then

(01:05:41):
later an ally and then something else.
And Amos is great.
Like he is equally formidable in whatever he does.
So he's, again, the actors are not the problem.
ah It's all this other stuff.
McClain, he figures out where Esperanza's plane is gonna land.
he gets the radio with the code already punched in from Marvin.

(01:06:02):
which is a complete coincidence and not something that he earned at all.
Whereas in the first movie he has to take out a bad guy and then discovers a walkie andthat's how he's in on the communications.
Here the code thing is supposed to up the, you have to have walkie talkies in a diehardmovie.
And they, you know, so that the hero and villain can communicate, but yeah, they presentthe code thing.

(01:06:23):
is he going to have to be smart and figure this out or what?
Nope.
No, just gets it.
Oh, I found one with a code in it.
And he goes out to where Esperanza's plane's gonna land.
And again, Esperanza, he's been flying in the whole time.
mean, this guy's such a dangerous criminal, maybe they should have two guards on theplane.
Like there's only the one kid.

(01:06:44):
He kills the kid and then he kills the pilots and he's landing the plane and he lands theplane.
McClain has him for like a minute.
uh And then, you know.
And then, you know, then the William Sadler shows up.
I want to mention Esperanz's code name with like William Sadler's group is Falcon.
Like he radios them and he's Falcon.

(01:07:05):
And the reason why he's called Falcon is because in the TV edit, John McClane'scatchphrase at the end is changed to Yippee-ki-yay, Mr.
Falcon.
So they were setting that up in giving that character that code name.
Wow!
Amazing.
Yippee-ki-yay-yay-yippee-ki-yay, foul.

(01:07:27):
Yippee-tie.
They should have gone with the alt.
for shit.
McClane is trapped in the cockpit.
They throw in the grenades.
And then he barely makes his escape using the ejector seat.
This moment was in all the marketing for this movie.
It was like the last shot in like all of the trailers and the commercials.
And it was clearly intended to be this movie's jump from the roof.

(01:07:51):
But again, it's just, if he hadn't showed up, nothing would have changed.
They would have got the general and gone back to the church.
my God, this is so terrible.
They're first of all, the the switching of the frequency to the beacon discussion amongthese flight control people is just jibber jabber.

(01:08:12):
It makes no sense at all.
They're just babbling about, let's switch the frequency to the thing.
then they all get it instantly.
Like, what the what are they talking about?
And then when John ends up in the sewer grate that is in the middle of a runway, why wouldthere be a
No, not in the middle of a runway, Chris.
That's not how airports work.

(01:08:34):
There's a massive metal grate in the middle of the runway.
it again, he pops up and he gets kind of stuck as the plane is approaching.
And it's funny because they keep coming back to the plane that doesn't seem to beadvancing.
It's just going through the same, almost like the same shot on repeat every time they cutback to the plane and you think, okay, something's going to happen here.

(01:08:54):
He gets out of the way just in time, but the great is still poking up.
The plane hits it.
It doesn't impact the plane at all.
And I thought, what was the point of this whole thing with the great there?
The shot of him ejecting from the plane oh up into the sky and toward the camera is one ofthe funniest things that I've ever seen in my life.
It is supposed to be this bad ass moment like you're talking about.

(01:09:18):
It just plays as funny.
And it's so bad and he's yelling.
Yeah.
I don't get that.
And the old lady unnecessarily takes a really hard swing at Willard Scott.
had that note too.
I had that note too.
The lady, she's like that pork or Willard Scott.

(01:09:39):
Like is that necessary?
What did Willard Scott do to anybody?
Ever he's one of the most beloved morning guys of all time on television.
Why did they need to take that swing at him?
I don't get that Code yellow has transitioned to code red Why are there so many grenadesbeing thrown into this thing to kill one guy?
Even say use them all.

(01:10:00):
He says to the guy, use them all!
You know?
But that's that's like throwing caution to the wind.
Like they're assuming in that moment that everything else is going to go fine and they'renot going to need any more grenades.
And so they just keep.
And by the way, if you think about where they're throwing them from, they should bebaseball pitchers because their aim is so precise to get into the little windows.

(01:10:22):
They all land right next to him on the floor in there.
Not one ends up bouncing back and oh, they have to juggle it or whatever.
Colonel Stewart hadn't been such a zealot.
could have played for the Washington Nationals or something.
So, yeah, they do contact, they're able to find another way to contact the planes.
They contact the planes, which really the only reason for that is so that Dick Thornburg,who has got a radio on the plane from his tech guy, can listen in and find out what the

(01:10:51):
situation is as they explain that the terrorists have taken over the airport and all thatsort of stuff.
which is yet another thing that they felt the need to include because it's a diehardmovie.
In the first movie, when he puts John and Holly's kids on the TV, not only is it grossbecause he's exploiting the kids and he like threatened the, uh, you know, the name or

(01:11:17):
whatever, but additionally, it actually puts John in danger and changes what's going onwith the terrorists.
And in this movie,
It does let the people in the airport freak out and run around, but it doesn'tfunctionally change anything as far as John and the terrorist plot goes that I remember at

(01:11:39):
least.
Well, the only thing it does is that because they're all running out when when finallyCarmine Lorenzo decides to get his ass in gear, he's and he has that line that's in the
trailer.
It's time to kick ass.
And then he immediately gets caught in traffic.
Yes.
So it slightly delays things.
it's just, and so it's just, you know, taking the surface of a beat from the first one,because it feels like an important thing that you get to play with, but the engine just

(01:12:08):
isn't in the car.
Yeah.
No, and that's kind of the movie is, mean, that sort of sums it up.
ah know, John McClain and Barnes, they go out to the church, they find out, you know, thisis where they are.
They apparently have been checking a bunch of different places, but that happens offscreen.
ah The army guys show up and this is where we get the whole thing with the red, the ammoclips with the red tape versus the blue tape and like, well, what does that mean?

(01:12:34):
And it's blanks versus like, it's a whole thing.
And it's so obvious.
Did any either of you just get the like the Zucker Abrams Zucker version where they put inthe clips that say blanks and they put in the clips that say lot, you know, real bullets
because that's how it plays.
But no one notices.
We have the firefight at the church and Colonel Stewart and his men escape on snowmobiles.

(01:12:58):
John grabs a snowmobile.
We have a long snowmobile chase slash machine gun jost.
It's a, but it doesn't matter because they're all blanks.
Like that's this whole movie is that John McClane is shooting blanks.
In the interim here, the icicle to the eye happened.

(01:13:19):
That was to the one guard that was part of their foolproof plan outside the church.
And then when these guys tear that sheet off of the snowmobiles to ride away on them, thathad to be another trailer moment or something.
uh They parked them just right.
They covered them to make sure they didn't get snow on them.
I get it.
But it's very similar to them leaving their hotel rooms at exactly the

(01:13:43):
precisely the same moment.
And then they're all run out on this.
They're all firing these machine guns at him.
He's just standing in the middle of nothing.
So he's absolutely exposed to any gunfire, anything that might happen to him, firing hispistol and he's hitting this guy, hitting that guy.

(01:14:03):
And it's like a GI Joe or like cartoon where the Cobra never hits anybody.
Yeah.
Fire, fire, fire, or like the stormtroopers.
And he's
Completely unaffected, seems not even concerned about the situation that he's in.
And then the snowmobile thing is so great.
And my note just says, this is such shit.

(01:14:25):
I was laughing so hard when this was happening because snowmobiles, they're moving kind ofslowly.
And there are several moments where they pass directly by each other and they still can'tshoot him.
Yeah, because they have live ammo.
He's the one with the—he's got the machine gun with the blue—the blanks.
Well, he's not ever hit.

(01:14:45):
He shot about 50,000 times in this movie shot at.
Yeah.
not never hit.
Not a one even grazes him.
gets cut in his lip from the grate in the middle of a thing or something.
I don't know.
And then we have the most epic exploding snowmobile arguably in cinema history.
haven't really.
It flies out and he's and John McClane just falls to the ground.

(01:15:10):
Yeah.
He's fine.
It's good stuff.
That's what he realizes.
They're blanks.
goes into the, he goes back to the airport and he's, he wants to prove to Lorenzo that,that, you know, major Grant and, uh, and, and, and, and William Sadler in cahoots.
So he, opens fire with the, with the machine gun, which is full with blanks.
Honestly, I'm surprised one of like the cops.

(01:15:31):
didn't just gun him down right there.
Like you're just like you're shooting like the machine gun at my boss.
Why didn't you?
Like, well, isn't this the part where the reporter who's terrible, by the way, where shecomes up to him and she says, give me the story and I'll give you a baby or something.
She does.
does.
me the story and I'll have your baby.
She offers.
but she offers her womb to John McClane.

(01:15:52):
Why isn't semenation a part of this story?
Because he needs that because they got into traffic so they need to fly out on thehelicopter because John McClane is the only guy who can stop the 747 with all the bad guys
taking off.
By the way, I have to add one more thing.
General Enspiranza is apparently the only trained pilot in this group.

(01:16:15):
Their getaway depends on flying out of there.
They didn't think to put one other guy or maybe two other guys.
who could fly a plane in case Esperanza didn't make it, in case he was injured, he wasinjured, but like, it's just like, wouldn't, you thought of all this stuff and you don't
have one other pilot.

(01:16:36):
McClane drops down onto the wing of the plane from the helicopter and you know, get thefights, he's obviously over-
Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on.
He gets out on the plane wing, right?
Yes.
He notices the gasoline door, which apparently there is a door on plane wings, people, ifanybody has any interest in this, that you can just open like a gas tank on a car.

(01:16:57):
uh
harder to get to than the gas tank of a car.
little bit, but it's, it's just an open, like unscrew this thing and all of the gasdraining out.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
But the best part is when, when the, other guy goes, notices him out there, right.
And he goes to make his way toward McClain on the wing and he just opens a door.

(01:17:21):
That's like a door in a hotel room or like a closet door.
It's just, he, he just opens it up.
There's no big latch to sort of swing around and
bolts that you know how when you you you just wouldn't think that it would just be such asimple thin little door on the side of a plane that would allow you just to walk out there
and I thought that was that was great because I I it's good for future reference ifthere's a safety situation on a plane that there's going to be a door there that we can

(01:17:48):
just sort of turn the knob on and walk out onto the wing yeah it's great yeah
Yeah, we have two fights with, he fights Major Grant, who gets sucked into one of the jetengines, and then Stewart, and you know, uh Colonel Stewart kicks McClane's ass right off
the plane, but not before McClane can open the fuel dump, which Stewart fails to noticedespite the fact it's right under him.

(01:18:13):
And McClane bites one of his fingers off in this fight too.
does, he goes all golem on him.
man.
It's it's Colonel Stewart of the nine fingers.
Um, and you know, and then of course you have the fuel and he has the lighter ignited andblow up the plane and using that famous catchphrase, Yippee ki yay Mr.
Falcon.

(01:18:34):
And this, uh, this fuel burns forever because it not only blows up the plane by, lightingit, travels along the snow and goes, and then lights the fuel that's coming out of the
air.
Cause the plane has already started to take off.
yeah.
No.
And look fine.

(01:18:54):
I'm with it.
But, uh, but then like a million planes, it burns.
It's the landing strip.
this jet fuel that is burning still on the ground on snow on top of snow ah for quite afew planes to come down.
uh
how works,
It's all part of McLean's plan.
Yeah, that's the thing is it's not which at least in the first one, it's not a plan, buthe, he, he saves the hostage.

(01:19:21):
He's like, get off the roof.
They would have all died on that roof if he had not, you know, done that.
mean, now again, opening the fuel dump and lighting it on fire, that is the one thingwhere he affects the villain's plot.
Yes.
Like that is now here at the end, he affects the villain's plot.
But saving the people is an accident.
Including Holly, whose plane lands first, but they were going in anyway.

(01:19:44):
I was like, I don't know.
So then Holly comes off the plane and she actually has the line, why does this keephappening to us?
And he, he's wandering around.
The plane has just.
And it's like Margo Kidder in black Christmas.
When she's on the phone with the Mona, you remember that part?

(01:20:07):
And she just keeps saying, it's so annoying, but it's hilarious.
He's just wandering around like a maniac screaming her name as though she's not going toexit from this plane that safely landed.
Right.
What does he, where does he think?
And he's looking around too.
If he didn't call her name, she might not have gotten off the plane.
It's like an alligator when the they're out in the ocean and those two girls and one ofthem disappears and the other one's like frantically looking left and right and yelling

(01:20:31):
for her.
And it's like, wait, if you don't see her, she's not there.
Something is a crocodile.
Sorry, crocodile.
And something has happened.
here, McClain just apparently this is what he felt he needed to do.
And thankfully she emerged and they got to have their reunion, which is all to set up thefinal joke of the movie, which is Dennis France showing up.

(01:20:53):
With the parking ticket?
Yeah, well, he tears up the parking ticket because it's Christmas.
And he says it real, it's Christmas!
It's real weird.
That's our farewell.
That's the way that they sign off on Die Hard 2 with a parking ticket joke.
What is really sad in the overall diehard mythology, this is the last time we're gonna seeHolly MacLean.

(01:21:15):
Because by the third movie, they've split up once again.
And honestly, John, you're screwing it up.
You're screwing it up, John.
Which may be the most realistic thing in any diehard
Honestly, might be that people don't change and that sooner or later.
Yeah.
Like, that's.
I imagine.
this kept happening to your partner every year, you'd be like, what am I doing here?

(01:21:36):
Imagine how slightly different the Die Hard, like everybody loves the original movie andrightly so, but imagine if they just let it just stand on its own.
If they had not made any Die Hard sequels, it would be like just, I mean, it's alreadygreat, but it would be, mean, the sequels diminish a little bit and it's just like, man,

(01:21:59):
if they had just stuck with it.
But yet I've had.
I've had so many copies of Die Hard 2 on every format, VHS, it's amazing.
I end up owning this.
I mean, it's almost like they should have, as we often talk about, filed the serialnumbers off of diehard, not made a actual in name sequel, but maybe, maybe just take that

(01:22:23):
premise and run.
of an idea.
That's a hell of an idea.
I mean, it's interesting because our second film today also deals with a group ofterrorists attempting to free a dangerous criminal who's being transported by an airplane
but with significantly different results.

(01:22:43):
Released in 1992, this is Passenger 57.
Ramsey wants me to hire the best person available to head up the counter-terrorism unit.
That person has to...
be you.
I don't want that responsibility.
I just gotta get back
into this game.
They finally captured the world's most dangerous hijacker.

(01:23:06):
Now, they're bringing him back for trial.
On a plane.
I'll my people.
That was their first mistake.
Once again, Charles Rain is in control.
How do you like your sirloin, Bloody.
But there's just one thing you didn't count on.

(01:23:27):
uh Passenger 57.
My show.
miss it.
oh
Who's in
I am
You are.
Wesley Snipes.

(01:23:48):
No, This is not him.
Back to your seat!
to his airline security.
Tell me you're good at this.
I'm the best.
another
Flatter yourself, Kata.
One way the other.
down

(01:24:14):
teach you never send a boy to do a man's job.
uh
Wesley Smythe
you
7.
occasion
Let me give you a word of advice.

(01:24:43):
feel like 1992 is really the year that the diehard inspired movies really start to takeoff.
And it's this film and a movie we'll be discussing next week, Under Siege, which both cameout about a month apart in the fall of 1992.
Oddly enough, both from Warner Brothers, which is strange.
Like Warner Brothers was like, hey, wasn't like, oh, Columbia's got theirs and Warner'shas got theirs and Paramount's got theirs.

(01:25:08):
No, no, Warner Brothers is behind them both.
And as I mentioned, there's some distinct similarities.
They both deal with airplanes.
They both deal with freeing criminals being carried by airplanes.
But whereas Die Hard 2 feels, to be honest, meandering and bloated, Passenger 57 is leanand mean.
It clocks in at 84 minutes and I had never seen this movie, but holy shit, it's great.

(01:25:32):
Oh yeah.
mean, I look, this is, and this comes out what a year after, um, new Jack city as far asMr.
Snipes.
Yeah.
Look, this, this movie, there are certain things that it takes from diehard.
There are certain things that it does not.
This is definitely, it is not Snipes is not playing in every man who's overmatched.

(01:25:55):
This is much more in the he's cool as shit and built for the moment.
Right.
And look,
I think that this movie keeps on moving, which is part of why it's just fun as hell forme.
And the other thing is just Wesley Snipes is so charismatic and awesome.
Having him be very competent, but still get over, he does not cakewalk through this movie.

(01:26:19):
His character does not, right?
There's, there's real trouble for him in this movie.
So it doesn't get boring from that angle, but I mean, just Holy smokes.
John Cutter is
It's kind of more in that James Bond mold of like, he's awesome, but sometimes the bad guygets the drop off.
Right.
But like, and he is an airline security expert.

(01:26:40):
So he, there's things he knows about planes.
There's all, you know, there's, there's a lot of stuff where it's like, he is, you'reright in a way prepared for this moment, but he's also not expecting it.
No.
Like he's not on that plane to try and, you know, root out a terrorist plot.
He's just flying from point A to point B for his new job.
Like he's going to talk to the board of directors.
And so it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's taken unaware.

(01:27:02):
It's amazing though, in comparison.
how much he genuinely affects the plot and that there's actual, like, you know, there'sactual stakes and he wins and he loses and there's setbacks and there's advancements and
you have a plot where the characters involved are affecting the plot.

(01:27:22):
And additionally, and I won't go into it now, I'll wait till we go through, but Cutter hasemotional baggage that he has to work through much like John McClane did in Die Hard.
In Die Hard 2, McClane has no emotional baggage that he needs to work through.
That whole character growth stuff is missing completely in the second one.

(01:27:44):
Here, and look, I'm not saying it's terms of endearment or anything ah in this movie,right?
It is on the level of Passenger 57.
but functionally it's there and you get stuff out of it.
agree.
agree.
Passenger 57 was written by David Lowery and Dan Gordon from a story by Gordon and StuartRaffel.
Raffel wrote and directed a movie we talked about on this show a long while ago and loved.

(01:28:08):
The slice of sci-fi insanity that is the ice pie.
Also wrote and directed a film we will talk about at some point in the future, the ETinspired Mack and Me.
Dan Gordon also for his part,
wrote one of my wife's favorite movies, 1985's...

(01:28:29):
Oh, gotcha.
ah That is one of my wife's favorite movies.
It made her an Anthony Edwards.
That is the reason why she watched ER.
She was an Anthony Edwards fan from Gotcha and was like, I'll watch, I'll watch ER.
Do anyone out there the gotcha miracle mile Anthony Edwards double feature?
I think you'll you'll like it.

(01:28:50):
And David Lowery, he worked on a number of films with director Joseph Rubin, including TheGood Son, which we talked about in our Fatal Attraction series.
He also wrote Star Trek V, The Final Frontier, for whatever that's worth.
And interesting, like Die Hard, the original script for Passenger 57 was written with anolder actor in mind.
The original story had a man flying to Europe to bury his son and was seated next to anIranian terrorist who hijacks the place.

(01:29:20):
But if you're doing a die-hard clone, Iranian terror, it just feels like your terroristshould be European, Chris.
Yes it does.
Yes it does.
And we have a fantastic one here with Bruce Payne as international terrorist CharlesReign, aka the Reign of Terror.

(01:29:42):
It's what an amazing name.
Charles Rain is not insane.
Charles Rain is not insane!
He's so good.
He's so like there's a little bit of Hans Gruber in the European-ness, but there's a lotof this guy's just batshit crazy and he's amazing.
I, he's great.

(01:30:02):
Both Snipes and Payne are terrific.
Film also features Tom Sizemore, Bruce Greenwood, Alex Datcher, Michael Horse of TwinPeaks and a very young Elizabeth Hurley.
I want to mention that initially the role of Cutter was offered to Sylvester Stallone.
who passed, and then was offered to Steven Seagal, and Steven Seagal had to choose betweenthis movie and Under Siege, which was shooting at the same time, and then eventually

(01:30:29):
landed Wesley Snipes.
This was Wesley Snipes' first big action movie.
Yeah.
And, uh, and Kevin hooks the director.
don't know if you said this.
Yeah, I was about to, because Kevin Hooks uh has had an amazing career.
Oh, yeah.
He started as a child actor in the late 60s.
He co-starred in an absolutely fantastic late 70s television series called The WhiteShadow.

(01:30:52):
White Shadow is about a white coach of a racially mixed inner city high school basketballteam.
And it was genuinely groundbreaking for its time.
Hooks moved into directing in the 80s.
and has been directing movies and an incredible number of TV episodes over the decades.
To contextualize his directing career, Kevin Hooks has directed episodes of both SaintElsewhere and This Is Us and everything in between.

(01:31:17):
including one of your favorites, the original V TV series.
Yes, did several episodes of the original V.
And he directed a TV movie, which we'll be discussing in a few weeks, Irresistible Forcewith Cynthia Rothrock.
this is not even only his diehard, this isn't even his only diehard-esque movie.
And I'm now super excited to watch Irresistible Force, having watched this movie, becausethis movie is great.

(01:31:44):
From the jump, this movie is great.
Like the opening credits over the...
the airport x-ray scanners with the groovy beat.
Like it's just, I really like this.
And here's the kind of movie we're in.
We meet terrorist Charles Rain, who's about to undergo plastic surgery to change his face.
This dude is going full Ernst Stavro Blofeld and I love it.

(01:32:10):
And the doctor's like, you need anesthetic and you know, for the pain.
He doesn't need it.
Why is that?
What time is it?
uh
be no pain.
Yeah, the FBI is coming in to arrest him and like he realizes this.
He kills the doctor, he jumps out a window to the street below, there's a chase to thestreets and he's caught only because he's hit by a car.

(01:32:35):
This is all in the first six minutes of this movie and it is just, it is out of the gate.
I mean, again, the contrast between this and Die Hard 2 couldn't be more stark.
wonder if he's like an Android or something because he's able to jump through a window,jump down to the sidewalk and keep on moving.

(01:32:55):
It's incredible the way that he's presented and it adds a lot of mystery around thecharacter and it also sets up just you're not gonna know what's next yeah throughout the
rest of the movie.
And I kept not knowing what was next.
Like this movie genuinely surprised me at different points.
was just like, wait, no, that's, this movie, just, it really kind of like, it's like, thisis a movie where things.

(01:33:21):
And it's much lower budget.
It is.
much lower budget, but it uses it well.
Absolutely.
And not just the action.
mean, the opening credits, the end is that X-ray of the eye or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you match cut dissolve from that to that operating room light from the, you know,scene.

(01:33:44):
and just little things like that where the framing and the, there's a lot of like some ofour favorite Italian genre directors of the seventies and eighties.
There is a lot of great visual attention paid so that things are very interesting, even inmoments where maybe you're not blowing a bunch of stuff up.
Right, where you don't have the money to blow up, you know, multiple planes up the waythey did in Die Hard 2.

(01:34:09):
But it's just, it's just a good solid, like, it's just a good movie.
Like, that's the thing.
we then, he escapes, he jumps out the window and then is caught by the cops.
He's only caught because he's hit by a car.
But then we see Wesley Snipes sitting on a plane.
and things feel kind of normal and ordinary.

(01:34:30):
And then Wesley pulls out a gun and takes one of the flight attendants hostage.
And now I hadn't seen this movie before, but I knew that Wesley Hyatt Stipes was the hero.
So I'm like, but like, if you didn't know that this scene plays out with total conviction.
Like it's not played like it's not real.
It's very well done, all of this.

(01:34:50):
But what it is, is it's a Kobayashi Maru.
It's a simulation we pull back.
After the flight attendant kicks Wesley Snipes shin, the guy grabs a gun, and then theplane breaks out in applause, and we see that it was all just a simulation.
Snipes character John Cutter, former Secret Service agent, who since the death of his wifehas been teaching airline security seminars, which is what this

(01:35:15):
And the flight attendant kind of went off script in disarming the pretend terrorists inthe scenario and Cutter's not happy about it.
And this is, it's it's a version of, this is not a guy who John Cutter, he is aprofessional.
Now there's also a emotional reason behind this too, for him that he has to overcome, butthis is not a guy who in the eighties sort of way is, yes, guns blazing.

(01:35:43):
I, I,
should and can take out everyone on my own.
This is a guy who does play as professional, which to me is a core, while he's not anevery man in his way, ordinary beat cop or whatever, like John McClane, there is a
competency and a more groundedness to it, even though it gets ungrounded at times and Iabsolutely love it.

(01:36:06):
Yes, the flight attendant, he chastises the flight attendant, Marty, for fighting back andnot following his instructions.
love his line where he refers to it as Angie Dickinson bullshit.
Rob, I miss the pop culture references of 90s movies.
Uh, because you understood them.
Yes.
Police woman, she was the police woman.

(01:36:28):
Cutter is approached by his friend Sly Del Vecchio, who works for Atlantic InternationalAirlines and wants Cutter to be the airline's counter-terrorism uh unit leader.
he's basically like, we gotta get you back in the game, Wesley Snipes.
It's like, you're out of the game, we gotta get you back in the game.
And he's out of the game because he lost his wife.

(01:36:51):
during a robbery in a convenience store where she was taken, like essentially hostage bythe robber.
And we get this during a series of black and white flashbacks while Cutter is pounding ona punching bag on a very rainy.
He's another guy in another one like the Beverly Hills movie that we had to get through.

(01:37:12):
He's another guy who has turned his apartment into a gym.
Yes.
He he just lives to exercise.
At it's a whole apartment.
you know, in Beverly Hills, he had just turned his bathroom into a gym.
let me go from the hot tub to the automated tackling dummy that's in my bathroom.

(01:37:33):
Here it's like, he clearly has like a loft style apartment and he's got some boxingequipment.
like, you know, that's, I'll buy that.
And no hot tub.
John Cutter keeps it clean.
Clean, yeah.
And here's the thing, is all this exposition is unfolding very, very quickly and very,very efficiently.

(01:37:53):
So, it doesn't feel forced.
You're just, it's like it's a tight script that is giving you what you need to know in away that doesn't feel like, here, we're giving you what we think you need to know.
And if when he goes to meet with Sizemore, I love Tom Sizemore.
absolutely.
I just really adored that guy.
Such a sad loss.

(01:38:14):
But uh we're back to the 90s fashion that was so prominent throughout our Get Me AnotherFatal Attraction series.
It's a lot of padded shoulders and suit coats and pastel colors.
He's driving a what is it?
Corvette?
A Corvette to get in there.
Yeah, to go meet them for lunch to take the job.
And the music that I thought was just going to be for this part of the film, like maybe itwas to help illustrate these hoity-toits at this fancy resort or whatever it is, this soft

(01:38:44):
jazz saxophone thing that's going on.
That's going to be throughout the whole film, people.
That's the one inescapable thing.
It's the the score by Stanley Clark.
It doesn't sound like it's mimicking diehard, but is very reminiscent of the score fromlethal weapons
so chill.
mean, it's like a blending of, and there are some interesting moments throughout it wherethere's traditional score underneath where you'll have sort of that countering the chill

(01:39:13):
nature of the saxophone that's over the top of it.
It's an interesting juxtaposition of the sort of soundscape that I find very fascinatingwith the whole.
I agree.
I agree.
was, uh in the meantime, Charles raised me with his lawyer and making it very clear thathe won't be pleading insanity by smacking the lawyer's face into a table and grabbing him

(01:39:33):
by the mouth.
There's a reference to Rain's who clearly engaged in some kind of abuse that, that welater learned, we later learned that Rain killed his father.
There's not a whole, we don't go into a whole lot of depth about that, but it's sort ofthe references to his father are sprinkled through enough.
to sort of just add a little bit of dimension to the character and his craziness.

(01:39:57):
And again, Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne are both absolutely terrific in this movie.
uh
They're magnetic and it's comforting to have a movie where you get that twofold.
Where I think I really feel like in a lot of especially action movies that are centeredaround a central hero or something, they're built to make you drawn to that person and

(01:40:18):
that person alone.
But here, just through the nature of the strong acting, there are some actors who can justmake this happen.
And I think that Bruce Payne is absolutely one of them.
He's just so outstanding in this.
And for Wesley-
And for Wesley, what a great proving ground.
I did a presentation at this film thing a couple of weeks ago about the history of vampirefilms.

(01:40:41):
And at one point I brought up Blade from 98, a few years down the way here.
People really love Blade.
oh They want more of those films.
And that's kind of unusual in that space for people to just be like, well, I wish therewould be more.
But that's a character that he completely owned.
oh
and never shied away from never.

(01:41:02):
wasn't like the skeleton in his closet that he did this.
I mean, he was so great in those movies.
I miss him being active in this realm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Um, you know, some motherfuckers always trying to ice skate uphill.
my God.
Honestly, who else could sell that line?
But Wesley Snipes, he's terrific.

(01:41:23):
so Cutter has decided to take the job.
is, he does a little meditation.
He decides to take the job and he has to fly from Miami to Los Angeles to meet theairlines board of directors.
Uh, I love the bit where Cutter and Delvecchio are going through the metal detectors andCutter keeps setting it off.
Um,
Let's just say that female TSA employees love John Cutter, like female hotel receptionistslove James.

(01:41:47):
lot.
Yeah, or airport fax ladies love John.
I just going to say that.
And it's at this point, you know, whatever, however long it's been in the movie, this actone, you know, to get John to accept the job and on the plane, this is a big difference
from diehard in that, you know, diehard very, very tight unity of time and space, right?

(01:42:13):
You are, it's, you know, it's not real time, but it's, it's playing out, you know,effectively like that in a singular location really, for the most part.
Whereas here we are.
All over the place, we are really breaking out a lot for early villain POV and figuringout what he wants and what the plan is.
There's no mystery in that way, but I would argue that those elements of the first diehardare not necessarily critical elements that you would have to have if you're following the,

(01:42:41):
you know, trying to follow in the wake.
Right.
Right.
And there's places where this does follow diehard in a very efficient way.
I that does feel very diehard.
But in its own spin, I think it's just really, really well done.
So on the plane, Cutter is the titular 57th passenger.
Apparently, Stuart Raffle came up with that title after looking at a Heinz ketchup bottle.

(01:43:04):
That's right.
like, there you go.
And he finds Marty, the flight attendant that he chewed out at the seminar, is alsoworking on this flight.
and also on the flight boarding at the last minute are two FBI agents and their prisonerCharles Rain.
Now I gave Die Hard 2 some shit for the fact that Esperanza was landing at a civil airportrather than a military one.

(01:43:28):
Like why wouldn't he?
He's on a military flight for Christ's sake.
So to be fair, I wanted to look into would the FBI put someone in custody on a commercialflight?
So I went and did some research.
I dove, I went into the Get Me Another library.
I pulled out the microfiche because that's where we keep all of our records to find out ifthis was something that would happen.

(01:43:53):
And the answer is not anymore.
But at this time, it was something that could happen occasionally.
Basically now there's a dedicated air service run by the US Marshals office.
And while it did exist in the 90s, it wasn't as big.
So,
they would occasionally put prisoners on planes, you know, with, you know, you know,Marshall or FBI escorts.

(01:44:16):
And that is something that could happen.
But to be perfectly fair and honest, probably not a prisoner of this magnitude whospecialized in air terrorism, no less.
You
And I'm going to point out the dumbest thing imaginable from the section at the beginningwhen, cutters on the plane in this beginning section, he is reading the art of war and in

(01:44:41):
the year 2000, Wesley Snipes would star in a movie art of war.
I think the book was more a jumping off point for that movie.
I also want to mention that the plane here, by the way, is a Lockheed L-1011 and it is athree-engine jet.

(01:45:03):
was the third wide-body airliner to enter into service and it is the same type of planethat Holley is on in Die Hard 2.
is no longer, there's a few of them left, but it's no longer generally in service forcommercial purposes.
But it was at this time and uh
And everything about the plane is right.
You'd have the galley and the baggage uh compartment would be below on the lower deck.

(01:45:30):
And then the cabins would be on the deck.
So that all works.
Also on this flight, there's another flight attendant, Sabrina, played by a youngElizabeth Hurley, who this is one of her earliest film roles.
And...
uh
Yeah, she, uh, she, she jokes with Marty that her British accent makes her sound cold andheartless, to which I can only say yes, please.

(01:45:53):
Um, and there's a kid and his mom seated near rain.
There's some unsettling.
love the bit with the finger guns and the kid, you know, the kids, you know, he's a littlekid.
He shoots up and then the way rain shoots back is so unsettling.
Like again, Bruce Payne's performance in this is really, really terrific.

(01:46:14):
And then we were off with a plane takes off and and cut it has a back and forth with Martybecause they're still they're both still kind of grouse about the whole seminar.
And uh there is, uh as we're coming into this, what I love is, and this is an element thatgets taken from diehard that maybe you're like, well, I guess you functionally have to

(01:46:38):
have it, but it is kind of funny that, you know, our hero has to wind up in the bathroomwhen the terrorists strike.
But the reason why in this is amazing.
Yeah, so Marty, just to basically bother uh Cutter, brings this older woman up to sit nextto him and she mistakes him for Arsenio Hall.

(01:47:02):
And it's amazing.
Like, this goes on.
Like, this is not like one gag that they...
to the Arsenio Hall bit full on.
Yeah, but that's why he gets up and goes to the bathroom, because he's so frustratedlistening to this woman.
And that is when Rain and the people that he has planted on the plane take control.

(01:47:27):
One of his guys is down in the galley and has smuggled aboard a case of weapons with thefood and passes up to Sabrina, who is also working for Rain.
I was genuinely surprised she was a bad guy, Rob.
how, I...
trusting of the hair, think probably.
uh Rain has a total of five people on the plane, in addition to himself.

(01:47:52):
He quickly kills the two FBI guys, they take control of the cockpit.
Obviously this is all pre-911, so where the cockpit could be secured now, the way it is,but he just goes in, who's in charge?
And the pilot's, I am, shoots him.
Who's in charge?
You are, sir.
It's great.
It's all, it's so clean.

(01:48:13):
Yeah.
And just, I'm having so much fun that unlike diehard two where I'm, you know, nitpickingCharles rain shoots the pilot who is right in front of the cockpit window.
So
This rain is insane, but I roll with it because it's fun.
I'm just going to presume that he knows guns well enough to know that the caliber of thegun he was shooting would not exit through the guy's head.

(01:48:41):
He knew, if I shoot him here, the bullet will stay in the skull.
So then it won't blow open the thing.
Cutter is in the bathroom.
He realizes what's going on.
And Rob, what does he do?
This is where this movie
calls back to Die Hard in a way that even Die Hard 2 doesn't, the first thing he does istry and alert the authorities.

(01:49:07):
He is a professional!
This is what you would do!
He goes, he gets the air phone, he kind of sneaks out of the bathroom, grabs the airphone, sneaks, puts the credit card in.
Oh, this whole call is on Cutter's dime.
And then he's trying to, he calls Delvecchio, who is not just his buddy, he works for theairline.
And it's, know, and then when he's, what I love is when he's forced out of the bathroom,because the guy sees him, he leaves the line open.

(01:49:32):
So Delvecchio can hear on the ground.
And he even basically, it's really good.
He says what's happening.
He says out, like he pretends to be a scared person and he says what's happening so on theground they can know what's happening.
It's really well done.
He grabs one of the hijackers.
He takes his gun, holds him captive and we have this standoff with Rain and Sabrinaimmediately.

(01:49:56):
this standoff is just, early on it's incredibly tense.
Rain kills one of the passengers and
Sabrina's got a gun point at Marty, but then in order to prevent her being killed, hegives up his gun.
Rain shoots his own guy and Marty uses the same move that she did in the seminar to getaway from Sabrina and they escape down the elevator into the galley.

(01:50:18):
But this whole sequence, it happens very, very fast.
And it is just, it is intense.
It is very, very intense and it all works.
And it happens fast enough that you're almost just, you're just kind of taken by surpriseat each move.
And by virtue of the setup, you get the hero bad guy connection very early, if not in thefilm, at least very early after the, uh you know, the takeover is happening on the plane,

(01:50:47):
right?
And so it is something that I, you don't feel as much of in Die Hard 2 at all.
uh You just don't get that personal connection for various reasons.
Getting those two guys in the same space early,
So that when they are at each other from a distance, which they will be for a while, itplays a lot better.

(01:51:08):
And it's interesting because the first Die Hard, by containing everything to the oneoffice building, to that one space, gives it a kind of very high intensity feeling.
it's almost like a pressure cooker.
Die Hard 2, with sort of the sprawling airport, loses all of that.
Well, here, we're compressing it down even further to the plane.

(01:51:31):
Now, they're going to get off the plane.
And so that changes the dynamic a bit.
the sequence, there's only, you know,
John McClane had multiple floors that he could retreat to in the original dire, places hecould hide.
Here, I mean, yeah, there's the underbelly of the aircraft, but there's not that muchspace, you know, which is probably why they needed to get him off the plane, you know,

(01:51:54):
midway through the movie.
It really does serve to turn up the pressure for this movie, which is already, you know,moving so briskly.
ah Cutter thinks he's got an ally with the guy in the galley.
ah But then soon finds out that that's one of Reign's made too.
When the guy comes at cutter with a knife, uh there's a great little fun under fight inthe underbelly of the plane.

(01:52:16):
I love like in the middle of it, Wesley Snipes.
He's like, he's fighting the guy.
He's coming in for the kick.
He just says, gotta go, gotta go.
I'm like, I don't know why.
I just love that little line.
Yeah.
eh
And again, this is taking something from the bad guys of the first die hardware in ahostage situation, confusion over who is a hostage and who is a terrorist is a fun thing

(01:52:40):
to play with.
And honestly, this dude in the galley, he fucked up because Cutter didn't suspect him atall.
Like, why would he?
Until he says, I think we should give Mr.
Rain what he wants.
Like, he'd be better off playing the helpful flight attendant and then stabbing Cutter inthe back when he wasn't looking.
I'm just saying.
Like, this guy is not on the A-Team.

(01:53:03):
There's a reason why he was down in the galley.
Cutter knew.
It's like, that's what I got, but I'm putting this guy down in the galley.
Cutter and Marty then move their way to the avionics compartment where Cutter intends torelease the fuel in an effort to force the plane to the ground, which is certainly a
surprise to Marty.
I I just love that whole interchange between the two of them.

(01:53:29):
going the avionics compartment.
Once a day I can override the controls and bring the plane down.
What?
This is a Jumble Jet!
Yeah, I know.
You who said to do exactly as the terrorist tells you to do?
He's not just a terrorist.

(01:53:49):
Well, how are you going to bring the plane down?
I'm going to empty the fuel.
You are a

(01:54:20):
Tell me you're good at this.
oh
When he tells her that he's the best, you damn well believe it.
And this is again, a little change in that Cutter definitely has, I think more swaggerthan uh the original McLean.
Yes.
And, um, but it's, it is deserved and it doesn't uncork until it has to.

(01:54:47):
Again, it's, this is not boomer from the taking of Beverly Hills where it's just likeinsane off the charts from the get go.
Yeah.
his hair either though.
He doesn't have boomer's mullet.
That mullet is, that's in the mullet, the movie mullet hall of fame for sure.

(01:55:07):
And then here we get the phone conversation, which has become kind of, you know, I thinkRain calls him down in the galley and we get the whole phone conversation between the two
of them.
And this is where we get that famous line, do you play roulette on occasion?
Always bet on black.
I mean, I love that they showcase that line.

(01:55:28):
with a sudden zoom in on Wesley Snipes.
Like, don't even, I'm not even % sure that line makes sense, but it's awesome.
Yeah.
And I want to say, uh, yeah, that one, think was in every trailer.
Agitable for this one.
It, and you, you compare it again to the, McClain ejector from the plane being in everytrailer.

(01:55:49):
And I'm betting on Wesley every time.
Yeah.
Sure!
And here's the thing, and this is where this movie is really set apart from Die Hard 2.
His effort, he's gonna dump the fuel to force the plane to land.
And it works!

(01:56:10):
His effort is successful.
I'm watching this for the first time.
I don't know how I didn't see this movie back in 92, but I didn't.
And I honestly, there's no way they're gonna put the plane on the ground.
this early, like we're halfway through the movie.
So in this movie, the hero takes an action that actually affects and changes the story,and now the villain has to compensate in his plan.

(01:56:34):
Functionally, it's very similar to McClain getting the detonators in the first film wherethe bad guys are forced to change plans because this is, it's not just an inconvenience,
it's the plan may not work.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

(01:56:55):
there's no moment like that in Die Hard 2.
There's nothing where he does a thing that forces them to deviate whatsoever, which is whyI think that movie feels so static.
And here, this movie, which again, as you point out, is a much lower budget movie, butfeels dynamic.

(01:57:16):
We get the plane coming in low over the fairground and they really want to make it clearit's in the south because the frame of the people looking up at the plane is bracketed by
two Confederate flags.
So they want you to know where it is.
And just quickly, uh race is a hundred percent going to be an element with, um, cutter onthe, you know, on the ground here.

(01:57:37):
And so it's not just, uh, you know, a signifier of a location place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's, it's kind of setting you up for a lot of the conflict that is going to happen ascutters trying to deal with, the terrorists on the ground.
Because before the plane can stop, Michael Horses' character, 4J, attacks Cutter, knockshim out of the plane, and keeps Marty on board.

(01:58:00):
That was something else.
I was genuinely surprised.
And then the cops quickly arrive and place Cutter under arrest.
And then we have the sheriff, who is kind of becomes a foil for him.
But it's interesting, because you're right.
I think race plays a role.
But at the same time, you expect the sheriff to be that

(01:58:20):
stereotypical southern law man like Buford T.
Justice or Sheriff J.W.
Pepper in Live and Let Die.
And there's a touch of that.
But also the sheriff is also not entirely unreasonable.
Like, like he doesn't believe Cutter when Cutter says that he works for the airlinesecurity.
But like from his position, like he shouldn't necessarily just take this guy at his word.

(01:58:44):
Like, it's not like Cutter's got some ID or a badge or anything like that.
It's touching on caricature in his character, but not entirely.
Yeah, although I mean, to that point, I mean, he does call Cutter boy a lot.
The other thing is, while he doesn't take cutter at his word, which is, as you point out,is not necessarily unreasonable.

(01:59:05):
I think not calling the airline to check his story might be kind of.
Well, that's the thing.
You should have called the airline immediately.
Yeah.
But he, he lets the, the, you know, the terrorist play him and he does believe what theterrorist has to say.
And I, and you know, I think that all plays in it plays into the race of it all.

(01:59:28):
But it also, I guess is another way that it's making Charles rain formidable in that heis, he can talk to the authorities and get what he wants, which is it's a reversal of how
Hans does it.
Hans talks to the authorities to trick them into things.
Whereas Cutter is much more direct about it, but he's still, the effect is still the same.

(01:59:50):
very smart too.
Like, so he demands they refuel the plane and in exchange he'll release a hundredhostages.
And the sheriff is like, well, I've saved a hundred people if I do this.
But he also, and he says he'll kill hostages, you five hostages for every three minutesthat the sheriff waits.
But he also, this is the interesting and really kind of smart lie is he tells the sheriffthat Cutter is one of his men who has turned against him.

(02:00:19):
And like it's so it's like, well, and they they as you say, they believe rain like it likethat.
That's it.
And they tells the guys to take Cutter downstairs.
And if he gets cute, shoot him.
uh But Cutter Cutter is not letting these guys take him anywhere.
He kicks a few of their asses and uh and and, you know, gets out of there, grabs amotorcycle and gets the hell out of there.

(02:00:42):
What the sheriff doesn't know is that rain is playing a slip off the plane along with thehostages.
Although, Cutter figures this out.
He kind of determines, that must be the plan, is to get off the plane.
And he goes right for the fairground, which is the only thing close by.

(02:01:03):
And is period accurate for a rural fair in that everything is Pepsi.
There is no coke, no Coca-Cola.
It's all Pepsi.
Interesting.
uh So soon the FBI do show up and they do confirm Cutter's identity, although he's alreadygone off.
I want to point out the FBI agent in charge uh is Kevin Hook's father, Robert Hooks, whohad a long career in film and television and theater.

(02:01:30):
He is the admiral in Star Trek III, The Search for Spock and plays basically the FBI agentin charge here.
Cutter spots Rain at the fairground, he kills one of the men.
We have a prolonged chase, some of which happens on a merry-go-round.
And Rain is captured again, which, again, I was surprised at.

(02:01:52):
This movie kept doing things I did not expect.
But Rain's people still control the plane, and they have hostages.
So Cutter and the FBI come up with a plan to let Rain go back on the plane
escorted by two FBI agents and Cutter is going to identify the remaining hijackers to apair of sharpshooters stationed nearby.

(02:02:13):
So the first thing though, he has to sell Rain on the plan by making him think it's hisidea.
And this scene between Cutter and Rain is just fantastic.
Mr.
Cutter, how kind of you to pay me a visit.
You've been a worthy adversary.
It's a shame we won't be seeing much more of each other.

(02:02:36):
If anybody else gets hurt on that plane, it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than aprison cell to keep me from ripping your fucking nuts off.
I'd come to expect more from you than cheap vulgarities.
You and I both know I will never see the inside of a prison.
The notion of good over evil will not allow you to sit idly by and watch the needlessdeath of your fellow citizens.

(02:02:57):
You know, Rain, you got a good point.
Maybe I should just kill you right here then,
You wouldn't take advantage of a helpless man, would you?
Never stopped you.
That's the American way, isn't it, brother?
You should know.
You're used to being taken advantage of.

(02:03:17):
We share the same hunger.
We're both killers.
I know the breed, Cutter.
I'm sick of your shit!
You need the passengers, I want the plane.
Put me back on board and the passengers will be released.
Yeah, Trust your instincts.
instincts are to wax your ass all over this floor.

(02:03:39):
Those are your emotions acting without the benefit of Now, passengers' lives are in yourhands.
Don't fail them.
And this is a great part of then us getting to see our hero, John Cutter, isn't justphysically a badass, but is also can be proactively smart himself.

(02:04:01):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so the rain is brought back on the plane and as he's going up the ramp, the snipersopen fire and they kill the FBI guys.
And we cut over it.
We see that the other guy who got off the plane, the galley guy killed and replaced Rain'sman from, know, killed and replaced the FBI snipers.

(02:04:22):
Another moment where I actually stopped and said, holy shit, watching this for the firsttime.
was just like the turns in this movie for a compressed 84 minute movie.
I just, I thought it was really well done.
Really well done.
So Cutter, Cutter, you know, shoots and kills the last terrorist, Rain escapes on theplane, starts to take off.
And then the sheriff actually like helps Cutter get back onto the plane.

(02:04:46):
So where I like the sheriff, like kind of has a turn where it's like, oh, he knows hefucked up.
So he helps Cutter get back on the plane.
He jumps onto the landing gear before it's able to take off and,
You know, we get into our third act, which again, this movie is just moving very quickly.
ah Onboard the plane is one of my favorite moments in this movie is when he, Raina startedto turn his attention to Marty and he tells her to pour him a drink and she asks what he

(02:05:15):
wants and he replies, anything wet.
But that's not the part I love.
The part I love is that standing behind him is Elizabeth Hurley's character, Sabrina, whohears this.
rolls her eyes and walks away because even she's tired of this guy's bullshit.
Yeah, yeah, he gets very creepy here.

(02:05:35):
I did notice Hurley too.
that's, uh I don't know if that was scripted or her or in conjunction with with KevinHooks, but it's a great little moment.
is a great little.
So Cutter now is back on board the plane.
He takes out 4J in the baggage compartment and he makes his way through the bowels of theplane to the cockpit to have the pilot turn around.

(02:05:57):
Sabrina comes to check things out.
He knocks her out.
And then we have the final fight between Cutter and Rain, which is, again, it's brutal andthe plane, the window gets shot out.
So the plane starts to depressurize.
Apparently there were no stunt doubles for this fight.
It was all Wesley Snipes and Bruce.
And then in the end, Cutter knocks Rain out of the plane.

(02:06:19):
He gives him that most 90s of villain deaths.
Oh, Falls from a great height, which echoes, of course, Hans death from Die Hard as well.
know, it's we get that we keep the Arsenio joke going when Cutter comes back out of thecabin at the end and all the passengers are doing a woo woo woo woo.
That was a thing that Arsenio for the younger listeners.

(02:06:42):
that Arsenio Hall used to do on the show, the woo woo, you know, and it's so goofy.
But again, this movie, it earns a little bit of goofiness to me because it's so well puttogether and it's it's lean and mean, you know, it doesn't have, there's not an ounce of
fat on this movie.

(02:07:03):
Like it just keeps moving.
And as you said, much less expensive than Die Hard 2, a budget of 15 million rather thanuh Die Hard 60 million.
And it's just a good, I can't believe I missed this in theaters.
I wish I had seen it, because it's great.
Yeah, I, uh, it was one of my favorites at the time of it.

(02:07:23):
And look, we're, there are a few others that are coming in this series that I also at thetime very much loved.
I think this passage 57 for my money is definitely one of the best in the wave postdiehard.
For For sure.
And this and Under Siege, which again, we'll talk about next week, I feel like those werethe two that came out in the fall of 1992.

(02:07:51):
And that's where you start to get, I think, a wave of diehard-esque movies beyond...
And there had been a few, and obviously you had Die Hard and Die Hard 2, but this is whereyou start to get some really successful ones, and then the floodgates just open from here.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Sometimes these trends will start.
You'll get, uh you know, someone try and hop on like a year later release date.

(02:08:17):
It'll happen.
and this one, it did, it was a little more of a slow burn and I do wonder, you know,diehard two, don't think was a total flop by any.
Yeah, was a big movie, but I do wonder if you would get even more diehard sequels if
if the trend doesn't ignite with the rest of the movie.

(02:08:39):
I think it was, certainly, was, you know, it's like the Mission Impossible opening whereit's just, the little, you know, the fuse.
It took a little time for the fuse to get to the powder to sort of blow up that trend.
But then once it starts, you know, 93, 94, 95, they're going to be coming fast andfurious.

(02:09:02):
And yeah, this is just a really, really good movie.
So I think that probably brings us to the end for today guys.
This is these are great.
this was great You know dire to man.
That's just it is not in the movie that I remember seeing fourth of July 1990 which Iloved at the time but it was just like now I'm like it is it is creaky and it's it and

(02:09:26):
it's like it just feels sluggish and creaky and this movie feels just like
What I like about that, Chris, the emotional binding that we have with movies, there's somuch more than just the movie itself in most cases.
Absolutely.
Embrace something.
And I loved your story about that time with your dad because we all have that, whether itwas a sleepover with friends or, you know, that off day where your dad took extra time

(02:09:52):
with you or whatever it might be.
That's the stuff that really is the magic.
And the movies are just kind of a conduit for that.
Right.
Like it didn't matter that it wasn't like it's again, and at the time I thought it wasterrific.
Now I'm like, oh, not so much, but it doesn't change the memory.
Like that memory is still wonderful.
Like, yeah, absolutely.

(02:10:13):
What are you going to say, Rob?
I was just agreeing.
um And look, I think we all love plenty of movies that maybe aren't technically perfect.
Sure.
And that's fine.
Yeah.
So any Die Hard 2 fans out there, I'm not trying to rain on your pre-order.
And here's the thing, know, the whole Die Hard series, to me, it's a little like the Bondseries in that if it's on, I'm gonna watch it.

(02:10:37):
Like, this isn't the last time I will watch Die Hard 2.
It will be on again.
Like, I'll be like, yeah, it's like the original, which I watch regularly, but like it'llshow up again, you you click it across TNT.
It felt like it was on TNT all the time in the 90s and aughts.

(02:10:58):
But we'll be off next week for Thanksgiving, but join us again in two weeks on Tuesday,December 3rd, when we'll be looking at the other diehard inspired movie that came out in
the fall of 1992.
So save a bowl of Thanksgiving boulevard because it's time for Under Siege starring StevenSeagal.

(02:11:21):
As always, we are your hosts, Chris Iannacone, Ron Blumorgis and Justin Beam.
And if you've enjoyed our show,
Please consider subscribing and following us on Blue Sky, Instagram, threads, and Twitter.
Get me another pod.
Check out Justin's album, Phantom Lightkeeper Shore Ghosts at JustinBeam.com, on Bandcamp,or on Spotify.

(02:11:43):
And if you've liked the show, tell your friends about it.
Tell your enemies about it.
Tell all the people down at your airline security seminar about it.
And join us next time as we continue to explore what happens.
when Hollywood says, get me another.
you

(02:12:07):
Mr.