THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
If you know the candy's good, make some more. Hollywood knows this in more ways than one and in the 1980s, we did not mind a sequel at for Beverly Hills Cop.
PLOT
Beverly Hills Cop II follows Detroit detective Axel Foley return to California to solve another crime. When Captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) is targeted for pursuing the case of 'Alphabet Crimes', due to letters being left behind after each heist, he arrives to solve it with the assist of Detective Billy Rosewood & Sergeant John Taggart who were punished for assisting Bogomil and reassigned to traffic duty under the order of the verbally abusive new police chief Harold Lutz. With Inspector Douglas Todd (Gil Hill) still irritated of his recklessness, Foley has his colleague Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) drive his car around to make him believe he's doing undercover in Detroit. In Beverly Hills, Foley reviews the bullets used against Bogomil which he traces them to a gun club managed by Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell). Furious that the cops are still onto them, Cain is tasked by his superior Maxwell Dent to assassinate him. When failing, Foley is able to get fingerprints that'll help him break into the gun club at night and find coordinates that direct him to the next crimes, which he foils alongside Taggart & Rosewood. The trio chase the robbers all the way to where they ditch the getaway truck and trace that to Playboy Mansion. Despite being in awe of meeting Hugh Hefner, they still call out Dent for his schemes, robbing his own businesses that have insurance to finance on firearms deals. Later on, the trio learn from his accountant Sydney Bernstein that he will be leaving to Costa Rica with his partner Karla Fry. Andrew's daughter Jan (Alice Adair) also uses her connections as an insurance agent to discover most of Dean's businesses have gone under except his race track. However, Lutz publicly mistakes the case to be over when finding the last calling card to Cain's signature on it, when Karla killed him on the last heist. Off of discovering his death, Foley deduces that Dean framed him for it. When he finds red mud at the stables, Taggart & Rosewood join him in following the trail to Dean's oil field where he is in the middle of purchasing weapons from arms dealer Nikos Thomopolis (Paul Guilfoyle). The protagonist trio's interference leads to a shootout where Foley kills Dent and Taggart kills Karla, before backup lead by Lutz and Mayor Ted Egan (Robert Ridgley) arrive to apprehend the remaining criminals. As Lutz tries to call them out for insubordination, Taggart & Rosewood stand up to him to confirm Dent was the real perpetrator. Realizing he could've jeopardized the case and sees how abusive he is towards his officers, the mayor fires him and appoints a recovering Bogomil to be the new police chief. The mayor thanks Foley for his assistance in solving the case and covers for him when calling Todd who reveals Friedman crashed the car on accident. The film ends with Foley saying goodbye to his friends before returning to Detroit.
THOUGHTS
I enjoyed the first film dearly, so I didn't mind seeing more of what can be done and boy was this another good time. Director Tony Scott handles responsibilities very well on what audiences wanted and gave a fair balance of action & laughter which didn't surprise me due to previously making Top Gun; The heart is there and you feel the adrenaline to expect in such a setting. Eddie Murphy is the main source of laughter and doesn't skip a beat three years after first hitting it out the park as Axel Foley. His shtick on getting rowdy when someone is onto him is still hilarious because it shouldn't work as much as it does, yet it does. I mean it was pretty smart for him to crash at a renovated house rather than an expensive hotel because he knew this case was not gonna be done overnight and it's more fun than crashing with either one of Rosewood & Taggart. Seeing him pursue a case in which he avenges someone who had his back says a lot to his character on being loyal no matter how grand the stakes are. It’s another impressive perspective on staying true to yourself because it’ll still be worth by the end of the journey. Foley’s ongoing loyalty to brothers in arms is a big inspiration here because if he doesn’t get things done, no one else will. He takes enough risks like getting Jan involved which could’ve backfired yet thankfully didn’t, proving some risks are worth taking. When making moves, it definitely gives a positive influence for Rosewood & Taggart to step up as well. Judge Reinhold & John Ashton do another good job in playing cops getting out of their comfort zones to do the absolute to avenge their boss. Had they not taken a chance like Foley did, they wouldn’t have the courage to stand up to Lutz when necessary. Similar to Hubbard was in the first movie, Allen Garfield shows Lutz to be to dense of a superior who doesn’t take the job as serious as he should to the point where you’ll yell at anyone off of wanting to. Thankfully, he was called out sooner rather than later and got rightfully punished for it. With him being such a thorn, you can almost forget who was the real threat. Jürgen Prochnow was convincing as Dent because he just nailed the two faced facade who was willing to go as low as he can to stay at the top. And with Brigitte Nielsen making an intimidating equal as Karla, who was arguably the muscle of his empire, you can mistake them to be unstoppable until they no longer were. The other set of laughter I had when watching this movie was the appearance of Gilbert Gottfried as Sydney Bernstein who was so obnoxious, he didn’t even know who he was working for. So seeing Foley trick him so easily was just too good to not laugh about. This movie was quite fun to sit down to, but fun doesn’t excuse some things that bothered me upon rewatching. For starters, Foley should’ve done a background check on the guy he was investigating as it lead to him getting made by someone else who recognized him. If he didn’t want to get caught, background checks on who the enemy is rolling with would’ve done wonders for him and the case. I also think he should’ve told Jeff to wear a disguise while driving the car or put it in a garage if he didn’t want it damaged. That bothers me more than Todd willing to spend $200 for a freaking tie. Foley was even pretty lucky to crash at the renovated house by fooling the construction workers, but those guys should’ve called their boss immediately because Foley didn’t even have blueprints to back up the ruse. Moving on, I think the robbers should’ve left the getaway truck at a junkyard because that’s just asking for Foley to find them. Other than that, this movie is still fine for what it is. In short, Beverly Hills Cop II is another good action comedy for hitting the checkmarks on being generally entertaining. If you liked the first one, it’s a no brainer to see this as well.
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