Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)

Beverly Hills Cop II

Director: Tony Scott
Writer: Larry Ferguson & Warren Skaaren
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Jürgen Prochnow, Ronny Cox, John Ashton, Brigitte Nielsen, Allen Garfield, Dean Stockwell & Paul Reiser

Date Watched: March 11th 2016

Verdict: THUMBS UP! 🙂

Beverly Hills Police Captain Andrew Bogomil, Detective Billy Rosewood, and Sergeant John Taggart are trying to figure out who is behind the “Alphabet Crimes,” a series of mostly high end store robberies distinguished by their monogrammed envelopes with an alphabetical sequence the assailants leave behind. Complicating matters is the new “political” state of the Beverly Hills Police Department, headed by incompetent and verbally abusive new police chief Harold Lutz, who is doing everything he can to stay on Mayor Ted Egan’s good side. Unimpressed when Rosewood calls the FBI to help solve the case, Lutz holds Bogomil responsible as commanding officer and suspends him, despite Bogomil’s efforts to convince him that Rosewood was only following a hunch. Lutz also punishes Taggart and Rosewood by placing them on traffic duty. On the way home, Bogomil is shot and injured by Karla Fry, the chief hench-woman of Maxwell Dent, who secretly is the mastermind behind the Alphabet Crimes. Finding out about the shooting by a news report, Axel Foley abandons his current undercover duties and immediately flies out to Beverly Hills to help find out who shot Bogomil. Taggart and Rosewood agree to assist Foley because of Lutz’s attempts to find an excuse to get them fired.

Posing as an undercover FBI agent to get past Lutz with the aid of Detective Jeffrey Friedman, Foley soon starts making the connection between the robberies and Dent. He first finds out that the ammunition fired at one of the robberies was designed by Charles Cain, the manager of a gun club owned by Dent. Foley has Bogomil’s daughter Jan use her connections as an insurance agent to find out about Dent’s financial dealings. Dent is robbing his own businesses on purpose in order to finance firearms transactions with an arms dealer named Nikos Thomopolis and is discreetly using Cain as the front man for his operations. Bogomil was shot because his investigation was on the correct track into the case.

Having foiled a robbery attempt at a bank depot, Foley is able to trick Dent’s accountant Sidney Bernstein into using his computer and discovers that Dent and Karla are planning to leave the country. Foley also learns from Jan that all of Dent’s businesses have had their insurance coverage canceled and are about to go bankrupt except his race track, which he is convinced is the next target. On the way to the race track, Foley solves the latest riddle sent to the police, and is convinced that this riddle was made easily solvable in order to implicate Cain as the Alphabet Bandit. However, Foley knows Cain is a patsy designed to throw the authorities off Dent’s trail.

The three arrive too late to stop the robbery and find Cain, shot by Karla, among those killed. While Lutz announces publicly that the Alphabet Crimes have been solved, Foley notices some red mud at the stables, which leads him, Taggart and Rosewood to Dent’s oil field, where Dent is making his final arms deal with Thomopolis. The three get into a shootout with everyone involved in the deal. Dent confronts Foley in the warehouse, but Foley gets distracted by one of Dent’s henchmen on the roof above him and Dent gets away. Dent then crashes through the wall in his car and Foley shoots Dent through the windshield, sending his car down a hill and erupting in flames, after running Foley over. Karla appears and is about to kill Foley, but is shot dead by Taggart.

Just as the last thugs are about to flee, the police arrive upon the scene, along with Lutz and Mayor Egan. Lutz tries to fire Rosewood and Taggart for their insubordination, and also tries to arrest Foley. However, both Taggart and Rosewood stand up to Lutz this time and prove that Dent was the real Alphabet Bandit. They are also able to convince Mayor Egan of Lutz’s incompetence, (since Lutz would’ve gotten in the way had he known about their activities, due to his intentionally ignoring the truth from other cops) and the Mayor personally fires Lutz because he is tired of his abusive attitude towards his own men.
Mayor Egan chooses Bogomil to replace Lutz as the new Police Chief. Foley returns to Detroit, but not before he gets chewed out by Inspector Todd over the phone, after Egan called Todd to congratulate him on allowing Foley to assist them on this case.

Thoughts:

I can certainly see why a sequel to the hugely successful Beverly Hills Cop would be a no brainer, you have a young star in Murphy taking the comedy world by storm, an interesting premise and a great supporting cast and for the most part the match or come close to matching the first film…in terms of action and story, the first film was a comedy / cop film, BHC2 is a cop film with the occasional funny moment, and that’s not meant as an insult because the film is still entertaining in it’s new form.

I’m sure this was intended to be a full on comedy but the truth is Eddie Murphy isn’t as funny (Or given as many funny things to say) as in the first film, whereas his rants and routines in the first film kept building and building and moving the story along here it just feels like he’s rambling and trying to fill time until the next scene. The stuff involving Taggart and Rosewood isn’t quite as good as the first film either although I do like that they three have become very good friends and are more comfortable with each other than they are in the first film.

The story is great as are the action scenes, like I say this feels more like an all out action thriller than a comedy, Beverly Hills Cop may be one of my favourite comedies, Beverly Hills Cop 2 may be one of my favourite action films, there’s such a clear divide in the change in pace and tone between the first film and this one but it’s a welcome and interesting change of pace.

Favourite quotes:

Chief: Don’t think Axel, it makes my dick itch!!!

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