a5c7b9f00b Axel Foley returns to Beverly Hills to help Taggart and Rosewood investigate Chief Bogomil&#39;s near-fatal shooting and the series of &quot;alphabet crimes&quot; associated with it. A series of strange robberies brings Axel Foley back to Beverly Hills to help his two fellow cops solve the case. All the familiar faces of the first film are back… The first film was a fantastically fun film that made the leading actor a huge star, famous especially for his motormouth style, and so naturally the makers wanted to cash in with the success with a sequel not long later, from director Tony Scott (Top Gun, True Romance, Enemy of the State). Basically Detroit cop Det. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) watches the news broadcast from Beverly Hills and is shocked to see that his friend Capt. Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) was shot by a tall woman, and he rushes to go and see him in hospital. He is reunited with cop partners Det. William &#39;Billy&#39; Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Det. Sgt. John Taggart (John Ashton) who may at times want to stick to the rules of the law, and who Police Chief Harold Lutz (Allen Garfield) is trying to fire, but they are also very keen to find the person who tried to kill Bogomil. Going onthey investigate the attempted murder are a series of specific robberies, being called the Alphabet Robberies,the perpetrator leaves behind clues, an alphabet letter, in chronological order. The robberies seem to be masterminded by weapons kingpin Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow), and Axel and his two chums have a key suspect for who tried to kill Bogomil, especially in the criminal&#39;s tall blonde girlfriend, and gun expert, Karla Fry (Brigitte Nielsen). Axel follows all the clues that are leading to both the robberies and the murder attempt, using all forms of manipulation and conning to get past those that get in his way, and his motormouth antics do come in handy in the situations he gets into, and of course in the end the case is solved. Also starring Dean StockwellCharles &#39;Chip&#39; Cain, Paul ReiserDet. Jeffrey Friedman, Gilbert R. HillInsp. Douglas Todd, Paul GuilfoyleNikos Thomopolis and Robert RidgelyMayor Ted Egan. Murphy does still create some good giggles with his fast trash talking behaviour to get his own way, and supporting cast members Reinhold and Ashton again are great characters to join in the fun, the only cast member you can complain about is Nielsen putting on another silly foreign villain accent. There were some alright chase sequences, and one or two reasonable psychical and dialogue based jokes, it isn&#39;tgoodthe first film of course, it is a not too terrible action comedy sequel. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Song for &quot;Shakedown&quot; (also nominated the Golden Globe), and it won the Razzie for Worst Original Song for George Michael&#39;s &quot;I Want Your Sex&quot;. Okay! At the time of its release Beverly Hills Cop was the highest grossing comedy of all time, so it works out perfectly that its first sequel would be directed and produced by the juggernaut Hollywood crowd-pleasers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (and directed by none less than Tony Scott). The formula is exactly the same (and man I really mean exactly), although it follows all of the usual rules of an action sequel, which state that it must have a much bigger budget (Axel still does his police work by his own rules, only this time he uses precinct money to drive around in a Ferrari), more deaths, faster and funnier jokes (it clearly shoots for this one, anyway ), and at least one more 6-foot platinum blonde. <br/><br/>Let&#39;s take a little trip, shall we? Beverly Hills Cop 2 was released in May of 1987, and so came just after things like Top Gun, Police Academy 3, The Color of Money, To Live and Die in L.A. (which was sort of an anti-buddy cop movie with a mean streak that is clearly reflected in Cop 2), Eddie Murphy&#39;s own The Golden Child, and the original Lethal Weapon, which was released just a few months earlier and may have been sharing theaters with it. Needless to say, there was no shortage of police movies and whatnot, and no time is wasted in attempting to stand out from the crowd.<br/><br/>The movie starts with a violent robbery pulled off in broad daylight by a highly organized group of criminals headed by the statuesque Bridgette Nielsen, who plays the curiously named Karla Fry. She&#39;s involved with a ruthless organized crime syndicate that is running firearms to Central America, and when police chief Bogomil is gunned down, Foley decides he&#39;s going to head on back to southern California to solve the case himself again. <br/><br/>Everyone is friends now after the events of the first movie. Taggart and Rosewood are no longer spying on Axel but have all become good friends,they have with Bogomil, who sided with them against the Commissioner or Chief or Mayor or whatever at the end of the last movie. Unfortunately, the new police chief is a total jerkoff and has been firing everyone in sight and replacing them with all of his own people, so once again Taggart and Rosewood and Foley are forced to go against direct orders in order to do what needs to be done.<br/><br/>The movie has been almost unanimously slammed by critics, and I would certainly hesitate to say that it&#39;sbadall that. In more recent years I have not always been the biggest fans of people like Jerry Bruckeimer (the mega-producer who we have to thank for such highly polished cheesefestsArmageddon and Gone in 60 Seconds and Pearl Harbor, not that he hasn&#39;t had his better movies), but if you are just looking for a fun popcorn action flick, you could certainly do worse than this one.<br/><br/>If nothing else, it was great fun picking out the hilarious 80s pop culture references, some of which were light-hearted jabs at the competition, suchthe posters for First Blood Part II and Rambo in Rosewood&#39;s &quot;stress-free&quot; apartment, and maybe my favorite, Bridgette Nielsen&#39;s (Stallone&#39;s wife at the time) earrings, which were these bizarre little metallic arrows that made her look like a Klingon. <br/><br/>It&#39;s true that some of the jokes and situations are a little too unoriginal, even only in the first sequel, suchFoley&#39;s remarkable ability to come up with crazy stories on the spot (although the best one is where he pretends to be a gay prostitute to get into a ritzy club and harass the bad guy) and his loud-mouthed streams profanity. But again, not necessarily something that I would criticize the movie for just for being there. It gets a little cheesy at times though, like when he gets into the bad guys&#39; office by pretending to be a delivery boy delivering highly unstable plutonium capsules in - get this - a brown paper bag, but overall it stays in the same veinthe original and may even be better in a lot of ways. It's hard to believe that the group who came up with the hard, clean edges of "Top Gun," sleek and unfeeling though it may have been, could make a picturecrude,muddled,destructo-Derbyishthis one. If Beverly Hills Cop II is its opening salvo, this is going to be a long, smoggy summer. [20 May 1987]
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