Die Hard 2 (1990)

Film: Die Hard 2 (1990)

Stars: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton, Reginald VelJohnson, Franco Neo, John Amos, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson

Director: Renny Harlin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Franco Nero: click here to learn more about Mr. Nero (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the late 1980's, it seemed like Franco Nero had largely given up on the concept of being a leading man in Hollywood.  The actor spent most of the 1980's working on Italian productions, including the only official sequel to Django, 1987's Django Strikes Again, and getting a supporting part in the Elizabeth Taylor curiosity Young Toscanini.  Nero did, however, get a supporting part in one of the biggest films of 1990, which is how we're going to close out our look at the actor this month.  Two years after the surprise success of Die Hard turned Bruce Willis into a star, the actor came back with an inevitable sequel, one where Nero would play the new big baddie in Die Hard 2.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place, like in real life, two years after the original movie came out, with John McClane now working for the LAPD, but visiting his wife's family in DC.  He's stuck at Dulles airport, waiting for his wife Holly (Bedelia) to return so he doesn't have to spend so much time with his in-law's one-on-one; he's also a bit of a celebrity from the events in the first movie.  At the airport, he stumbles across a plot being foisted by Colonel William Stuart (Sadler), as Stuart has shut down all of the runway lighting, making all of the planes circling the airport (just in time for Christmas, adding more fuel to the "is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" debate).  Stuart is blackmailing air traffic control to let General Esperanza (Nero) to land safely and flee the country rather than face trial in the United States.  This sets off a standoff between Stuart's men, McClane, and the air traffic police (including Dennis Franz & Fred Thompson) who at first hate McClane's interference, but in the end decide it's best to listen to him.

This is, of course, because he's always right.  Die Hard 2 has frequently been criticized in the wake of Die Hard, a relatively stupid movie that works because Willis is in sexy unlikely hero mode (and Alan Rickman is dynamite as Hans Gruber), because it turns McClane from a rough-and-tumble cop into a superhero.  There's no pretense here-every single one of McClane's decisions and moves are exactly right, and the cops that he's going up against are always wrong.  There's such a libertarian streak in this movie that you'd think it'd been directed by Clint Eastwood.  The film also fails in its side characters (for starters, there's too many of them).  John Amos has a twist where he's actually working for the bad guys undercover, but it's not telegraphed AT ALL and comes across less as good story structure and more "wouldn't it be awesome if?" riffing.  The villains are also a failure.  Sadler opens the film completely naked, to the point where you think you might get another great crazy villain, but never delivers on that promise, and Nero is sidelined for huge chunks of the film.  You know Nero would probably be capable of at least a Gruber-like dialogue, but he never gets the opportunity, going up in flames without much character development.

Nero's career never really got out of the mold of Italian leading man, occasional Hollywood player.  He would make Italian films for much of the next two decades, but none had the crossover appeal of Django, and would star in supporting roles in Hollywood movies like John Wick: Chapter 2, The Pope's Exorcist, and Letters from Juliet, where he reunited onscreen with his long-time love Vanessa Redgrave.  In 2012, he even reprised a version of his Django character in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, clearly inspired by the western.  Next month, we're going to talk about the career of another actor who worked in spaghetti westerns, and like Nero, would cement his stardom there.  But unlike Nero, he would not only become a major leading man, but would become one of the defining cinematic stars of the past 50 years.

OVP: Die Hard (1988)

Film: Die Hard (1988)

Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, James Shigeta

Director: John McTiernan

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Film Editing, Sound, Sound Editing, Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

In recent years, the controversy over what constitutes a "Christmas movie" has become a weird social media obsession.  People get into arguments over whether or not a film having even the remotest connection to Christmas qualifies it as a "holiday film," in one of those internet arguments that doesn't actually mean anything, but is a welcome distraction from the dystopia of 2020.  Few films have highlighted this problem better than Die Hard, the 1980's action-adventure staple, and possibly the "most important" American film that I had never seen before I, deciding to wade into the Christmas film debate (spoiler alert-it's a Christmas movie) decided to indulge my inner-action hero & catch it in time for the holiday season.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on John McClane (Willis), a New York City cop who is visiting his estranged wife Holly (Bedelia) in Los Angeles, where she is a high-powered executive at the Nakatomi Corporation.  During the holiday Christmas party, which McClane is invited to, a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Rickman), invade the building, killing the security guards & imprisoning the party guests, with only McClane not held captive.  He begins to use his New York City street-smarts to outfox Gruber, taking out his men one-by-one, with the help of LA Police Sergeant Al Powell (VelJohnson) on the ground.  The film ends with Gruber falling from the building, his attempts to steal $600 million in bearer bonds ruined (and almost all of his men dead, though one is left alive for Powell to shoot), and with John & Holly reuniting before the credits roll.

Die Hard was met with mixed reviews when it initially came out, and it's not difficult to see why.  The plot is repetitive, and it's not subtle.  Gruber is pure evil, as if plucked out of a James Bond film, and several aspects of the film require suspension of belief, specifically the complete incompetence of the FBI, LAPD, and of several of the party guests, particularly a man named Ellis who foolishly thinks he can outfox Gruber.  Other than John, Holly, Al, & Gruber, no one in this movie has so much as two cents worth of brain cells, and it makes it a bit thin.

But...I didn't care.  Die Hard may be on its surface quite stupid, but it's also incredibly well-constructed.  The action sequences are universally impressive & well-choreographed.  The film's editing and sound effects are sharp & fast-paced (certain scenes involving Willis hanging down an elevator shaft or off the side of the skyscraper are the stuff of legend now, but even if you know they're coming it's thrilling & well-cut).  And the performances are great.  Willis wasn't an action star at the time (many thought Fox was nuts for spending so much money to secure a TV actor for this role), but he was afterwards for a reason.  He has an everyman appeal that's impossible to deny (sheer star power), and he's sexy as hell in his dirty white tank.  Alan Rickman is his equal as the nasty Gruber, both parts camp & swagger; he was also an unknown, and would suddenly come to Oscar's attention after this.

And the visual effects are dynamite (sometimes literally).  This is in an era more focused on practical effects, but they totally work as we see McClane & Gruber tear apart the gigantic skyscraper, in some ways a throwback to the disaster films of the 1970's.  While the hardest to pull off was likely the gigantic explosion at the base of the building, my favorites were the later scenes involving Willis cascading off of the roof & through a glass building in almost seamless precision.  Die Hard is not Citizen Kane, but it earns its place as a modern classic of action-adventure even 30+ years after its initial release.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

Film: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Jason Sand, Brooklynn Prince, Maya Rudolph, Will Farrell, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Cobie Smulders, Ralph Fiennes, Bruce Willis...it's a lot of cast
Director: Mike Mitchell
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

When the first Lego Movie came out five years ago, it felt like an unexpected phenomenon.  Buoyed by a not-yet-ubiquitous Chris Pratt, the John Everyman of Emmet as the main character in a film with a metric ton of site gags and inside jokes toward the Lego Culture was a genuinely good movie, as much an awesome commercial as it was a relentless pop culture orgy.  Since then, we've actually had two more installments in the series, with the equally as good The Lego Batman Movie, and then the first misfire in the series The Lego Ninjago Movie (full disclosure: I haven't seen this picture yet, so the "misfire" label is based on box office/critical consensus and not my own personal estimation).  As a result, The Lego Movie 2 arrives really as the fourth film in the series, and with weightier expectations about what it can accomplish compared to the first film in the series.  The movie falls in the middle of those expectations, still clever in its moments, but weighted down by knowing it could be better and with gags that fall flat as often as they soar.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie picks up a few seconds after the events of the previous movie, with a war of sorts breaking out between the Duplos in the last moments of the first film, and then over the next few years we see the destruction of the Legos' world at the hands of the Duplos, repeatedly destroying their cities.  This results in a sort of Mad Max-style dystopia where Lucy (Banks) takes on the role of Max, and is perplexed why Emmet (Pratt) seems to act as if nothing has changed.  One day a mysterious masked stranger (Beatriz) comes to their city, and steals away a number of the characters, including Batman (Arnett), Benny (Day), Unikitty (Brie), and Lucy.  Emmet tries to track them down, and eventually finds a mysterious city with a potentially duplicitous shape-shifting Queen (Haddish) presiding.

The film, before I get to the bad, is super cute at parts.  The overall song score is considerably better than the first film, in my opinion, though I doubt they get the cultural cache of "Everything is Awesome."  You will almost certainly be adding "Catchy Song" to your iPhone, and Tiffany Haddish nails her evil villain number (even though, it turns out, she's not an evil villain), and in my opinion steals the movie out-from-under everyone around her.  There are a few site gags that are really strong, mostly surrounding Haddish's shape-shifting Queen, and some of the previous film's characters, like Arnett's Batman, remain hilarious.

So why am I just "meh" about the film?  Honestly, it's because the story itself is a bit of a drag. Unlike the first movie, there's no surprise about the real-world here.  We know the real-world exists, and it's pretty obvious to anyone over the age of seven that our main character has a baby sister who is trying to befriend him by copying his favorite hobby of legos.  This sentimentality is so omnipresent that it makes The Lego Movie 2 feel less like a film and more like a proper commercial: "see, the whole family can unite with Legos!"  This might be naive, but if I'm going to be forced to watch product placement, I want it to feel fresh.  It doesn't help that Banks & Pratt have become near-constant presences at the movies in the past few years, and since neither seem to change up their schtick, this is something we've already seen even when its new.  Tiffany Haddish is at risk for this in the future, but at least she hasn't done a G-Rated version of her screen persona yet so the Queen is a new element to this universe, something sorely lacking in the rest of the movie.  It's possible from the box office that this may be the final installment of the Lego franchise, or at least the last one that features Emmet & Lucy-if this is the best they can come up with, perhaps that's a good thing.

Looper (2012)

Film: Looper (2012)
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, Jeff Daniels
Director: Rian Johnson
Oscar History: None
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

One of my favorite realizations over the past decade in cinema has been the recent and obvious rise of Joseph Gordon-Levitt from quirky kid on an okay television series to genuine movie star.  Gordon-Levitt has an affability you don't see on screen as much these days-a sense of whimsy, of intelligence, of nerdiness that I find quite endearing.  It was on display most and best in the charming and lovely (500) Days of Summer, a romantic dramedy that I totally fell in love with a few years back.  And yet, since then, about the only thing that I feel he's truly added to a film is the smoldering sexual tension he brings to Inception when he spends half of the movie drooling over Tom Hardy.  He's a great presence off-screen and definitely has talent, but his work in Lincoln and The Dark Knight Rises just doesn't seem to fit into the universe that it's trying to inhabit, and sadly, I don't think that he could possibly have saved Looper, even if he wanted to have made the attempt.

(This review is about to get all kinds of spoiler-y) The movie is about, well, it's about every hackneyed Sci-Fi cliche you could possibly imagine, but it's mostly about time travel.  The film takes place in 2044, and talks about how in the future (2074) there is time travel, but it's only used by crime bosses to kill enemies and to ensure that no one discovers in the future that people have been killed, they send them back in time to be killed by "loopers," scummy paid assassins, of which Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is one.  They're called loopers because eventually they have a golden pay day and will have to kill themselves.  You know, of course, where this is going even if you haven't seen the movie or the previews or Gordon-Levitt's stunningly realistic makeup.  Bruce Willis comes back as Old Joe, and because he's a major film star and not some random character actor, he manages to escape from Young Joe and go on the lam.

Here's where I have my first major problem with the movie.  See, I get that Gordon-Levitt is young and short-sighted and doesn't realize that 58 or 62 (whatever age Willis is supposed to be, but it's surely in that range) is right around the corner, but I just don't think anyone is so stupid that they'd want to kill their future selves.  It seems bizarre to me that you wouldn't count your blessings, quickly go on the run, and take comfort in knowing that you lived for at least another 30 years.

And yet, Young Joe chases down Old Joe, and manages to find him in a cafe, and we learn that Old Joe, after years (and years) of debauchery and killing for hire, eventually meets a lovely woman who changes his life, and is killed on the day he is brought back to be looped.  His mission this time around is to destroy the person who put the hit on him (he has the date of birth and hospital code of the 5-year-old in 2044 that he must kill) and hopefully stop his lady love from being murdered.

The film chases on, with Young Joe acting brazenly and quite idiotically.  He's seen what happens to other people who don't close their loop, and yet he still seems to trust that his life will someday return to normal, and again, keeps trying to kill himself.  Old Joe, too, proves that age does not grant wisdom, and decides to murder an innocent child just to save his wife. At this point in the movie, without showing some perspective or more insight into Old Joe, the entire Old Joe plotline is lost to me, and he became a bit of a villain, which may have been Johnson's intention.  The guy is fine with killing two random kids just to try to save himself from a life he chose as a grown man?  This seems most unpleasant and the sort of thing that should be addressed by a film that is too busy trying to please fanboys with random gadgets and "awesome" concepts than to address the psychological torment that is right there for the creative writing plucking.

The Young Joe story also seems to be deeply silly and overblown.  Emily Blunt's character, completely tough-as-nails in her first scene, about faces and gets all doe-eyed and gooey the second Young Joe talks back to her, and proceeds to be more of a random sidekick than an actual strong, independent woman, (which I was so in the mood for after seeing that Piper Perabo's character was simply a prostitute), but in the mind of Rian Johnson, women's roles in the future will either be hooker, waitress, or a mother waiting to be saved.  Not a great moment for feminism.

The film's ending, though, is where a lot of the vitriol is going for me.  Time travel is fuzzy, and in the movies there are dozens of situations that it just doesn't work in (even the greatest of them all, Lost, had trouble with it), and in the (double spoiler warning) ending, where Young Joe kills himself to prevent Old Joe from killing Emily Blunt's son (who is the future guy who puts a hit out on Old Joe), so Emily Blunt's son won't have a reason to enter into a life of crime?  If that didn't happen, then Old Joe would never have sought him out in the past!  It's the paradox of time travel and change the past sorts of situations-once you remove that need, you're no longer coming back to the past for a reason.  It makes literally no sense, and is a big slap-in-the-face to those of us that stuck around through the nonsense to make it to the final scene.

OVP: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Film: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Stars: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bob Balaban
Director: Wes Anderson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

The films of Wes Anderson always toe a fine line between magic and twee-perhaps they're one in the same.  I will admit to not always falling under his spell-sometimes the films fall into the category of too-in-love-with-itself, other times it seems as if we are being introduced to yet another strange character for the sake of meeting another strange character, and not because it is advancing the story in any beneficial way.  However, I will admit that, on occasion, the writer/director can manage to bring to life the surreal, the whimsical, and thankfully, Moonrise Kingdom seems to be one of those occasions.

(Spoilers throughout) The film tells the tale of many characters, but primarily Sam (Gilman) and Suzy (Hayward), two youths who are eccentric, and occasionally, a bit violent (particularly Suzy).  After fatefully meeting at a play, they become pen pals and write letters, eventually planning to run away together.  Suzy's parents (Murray and McDormand) don't seem to know how to handle her, and so she wants to flee, whereas Sam's foster parents find him to be a constant struggle, and he doesn't fit in with his Khaki Scouts, despite the best efforts of his Scout Master (Norton).

And so they set off across the island where they live (they never state exactly where it is, but I got the sense that it was Maine, considering the lovely scenery and island villages), two non-judgmental soulmates, Sam armed with an impressive set of wilderness skills and a propensity for saying what is precisely on his mind, and Suzy with a wild streak and a suitcase full of young adult fantasy literature (with primarily female protagonists, something that Wes Anderson doesn't know much about, since he always seems to put a male figure front-and-center in his films).  Along the way, they are chased by Suzy's parents, Sam's scout troop, and a totally game Bruce Willis as a dim but lovable lug of a police officer, and in the process, realize that they are in love with each other.

The film progresses to an increasingly madcap series of stunts after they are initially caught.  The best part of the movie is most definitely the first half, when they are still discovering exactly why they're running away, and there's more intrigue about what's in store for them.  Once they are discovered the first time, the film gets increasingly far-fetched, with an army of boy scouts trying to outrun Sam at one point, just to have Sam suddenly be struck by lightning (and yet bounce back as if nothing had happened).  The film also tries to sort out some of its loose ends, with much less success than the primary story line-I had trouble caring about Murray and McDormand's marital troubles (or the affair McDormand was having with Willis as a result), since those were the only things that defined the characters, aside from the bevy of quirks that Anderson throws down the respective characters' throats.  One highlight of the film's second half would have to be Swinton's Social Services (every time they called her that, or she called herself that, I laughed as I realized that was going to be the only name the character got).  Swinton, always a firecracker performer, sinks her teeth into the world of Wes Anderson with virtuosity, spouting off her lines with a distinct matter-of-factness and dressed like she's channeling Maggie Smith's Jean Brodie.

As the film progresses, you become more invested in both Sam-and-Suzy, and the world that they are exploring (seriously, who didn't want to go camping after seeing that gorgeous island?), and though about 45 minutes in it becomes obvious that they will in fact succeed in ending up together, you still can't help but smile when the final scene arrives, Sam dressed like his new foster father, and the two of them still sneaking around, cleverly alluding to the title, a joke you almost certainly guessed but are still glad to see acknowledged.  You know the story will go on for these two, and that their bizarrely wonderful children will hear these stories for years to come.