While based on a novel just like its predecessor, this second installment of the Die Hard franchise came not from the works of Roderick Thorpe but from Walter Wager's 58 Minutes. Because of a commitment to direct The Hunt For Red October, John McTiernan had to decline the invitation to return to the director's helm. Instead, Finnish director Renny Harlin came on board while the production filmed in Michigan and Colorado to achieve the necessary snowbound setting. Bruce Willis returned to his one-liner ad-libbing best as the cavalier cop John McClane with a bad luck penchant for running into terrorists, this time at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. Bonnie Bedelia, William Atherton, and Reginald Veljohnson all returned to reprise their supporting stints, while newcomers William Sadler, Dennis Franz, Fred Dalton Thompson, Tom Bower, Art Evans, Sheila McCarthy, and John Amos all fleshed out another stellar cast.

Set ostensibly one year after the events of the first film, Die Hard 2 finds John McClane at an airport waiting for his wife to arrive for Christmas. When McClane follows a pair of suspicious looking individuals into a restricted area, they open fire on him. Hot-tempered Captain Lorenzo (Franz) dismisses McClanes instincts that "someone is about to seriously $*%# with this airport."  McClane's personal investigation reveals that the men who tried to kill him were-- officially-- already dead.

Suddenly, the airport is indeed seized by the renegade Colonel Stuart (Sadler) and his band of mercenaries in order to free incoming despotic drug lord General Ramon Esperanza upon his landing in the United States. But McClane has other ideas: he throws every conceivable wrench into the works in order to see his wife safely to the ground. When "help" from dirty agents further complicates his plight, McClane sets off on a one-man mission to save the planes above by sinking the terrorists below.

Despite the claims by purists that the first film is better than the sequel, the box office numbers emphatically refute the claim. With almost $120 million in domestic box office, the sequel outdid its predecessor by fifty percent. The sharp writing and gleeful references to the first film packed the seats for an intense action ride that would return twice more in 1995's Die Hard: With a Vengeance and 2007's pending Live Free or Die Hard.