Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Often criticized as a not-so-good sequel, it earned practically the same money at the B.O. than the classic first movie, which of course it's the best from the "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise, no doubts about that, but the second one is still good in its own way.After the good job he made for the Simpson / Bruckheimer team in "Top Gun", Tony Scott was hired on the spot to helm "Beverly Hills Cop 2", with a bigger budget than the previous film & featuring almost the same cast & crew, but obviously, Scott added its own style to the film, way different than Martin Brest, which infuriated some of the "Beverly Hills Cop" purists.As a commercials and videoclips director, Scott was well-known for his flashy and glossy visual style, fast pacing, quick editing and over-the-top action, and that was the expected final product for "BHC2" and for sure, he delivered it even beyond expectations.It have more action than the first one, but the comedy situations (and timing) still dominate the screen and the higher budget is noticeable as much as the polished visual style of the whole, which was an improvement over the first.Eddie Murphy is back on his definitive role as Axel Foley, after the critical panned "The Golden Child", this time also as a co-writer and with him are back too: Judge Reinhold & John Ashton (the "Laurel & Hardy" of the Beverly Hills Police Department, both with more screen time and enhancing Murphy's acting and the general comedy tone of the movie), Gilbert R. Hill & Paul Reiser (as Inspector Todd and Jeffrey Friedman, respectively Foley's Chief & partner from Detroit, both hilarious), Frank Pesce (the cigarettes' smuggler from the first which appears as Robert Pastorelli's nephew, even if he looks older) & Ronny Cox (in an extended cameo role reprising Lt. Bogomil in a break of shooting "Robocop"), together again for another ride.The new additions to the cast, performed it superbly, with the Berliner Jürgen Prochnow playing the eerie main villain, Maxwell Dent and the Danish Brigitte Nielsen playing his sexy bodyguard / henchwoman, Karla Fry in a clear homage to the James Bond's villains, especially the Christopher Walken / Grace Jones evil duo in "A View to a Kill", which was released 1 year before "BHC2" went to production. Eddie Murphy himself is a great fan of the James Bond movies, hence the "Bond-ish" villains presented here.Allen Garfield as the grumpy Chief Harold Lutz; Dean Stockwell as Carlos Cain; Paul Guilfoyle, from future "C.S.I." fame, as the arms' dealer Nikos Thomopolis; Gilbert Gottfried as Dent's accountant, Sidney Bernstein and a cameo from Hugh Hefner complete the main cast, which also features a "blink and you'll miss it" appearance of Coppola's regular supporting player, Glenn Withrow as Willie, one of Karla's henchmen.The major problem about this sequel it's the screenplay which wasn't as good as the original, it was a bit lazy developed and the movie works much better in the comedy and action sequences alone, than trying to making sense. So in the first movie, Axel and Lt. Bogomil said goodbye to each other in good terms, after Foley helped the L.A. Police to catch the drug dealer / smuggler Victor Maitland, but nothing suggests that they will became as close as being fishing together (the same for both Rosewood and Taggart), but after two years only they're all best buddies in the world, Axel knows his daughter and Bogomil's house and later in the movie, we see Axel entering Rosewood's place for the very first time. It was way more logical for Axel being closer to Rosewood, after the events of the first movie, than to Bogomil. The sudden "Rosewood goes Rambo" gimmick is an in-joke about Sly Stallone being the first choice for "Beverly Hills Cop" and the fact that Stallone's then wife, Brigitte Nielsen, was cast as the blonde bombshell, Karla Fry, in the movie and we can even glance a poster of "Cobra" starred by both Stallone & Nielsen and released a year before, when Axel is using the phone in Billy's room. This decision also upset some of the fans, but i find it harmless to the general plot.About "The Alphabet Crimes", that was a bit childish and corny decision to use as the villains' device, it looks a bit out of place in an 80's action flick, suiting more that campy Batman TV Show from the 60's, something the Joker or the Riddler could have done.A plot hole occurs when "The Alphabet Crimes" were called by that, when only Adriano's was robbed at the beginning of the movie, even before Bogomil was shot, so with only an envelope with an "A", the apparently incompetent Beverly Hills Police Department, led by Chief Lutz and his right hand, Biddle, they know that the city will have more crimes following the alphabet letters ? Johnny Wishbone, they're not...Besides all the plot problems, visually and technically, "Beverly Hills Cop 2" it's a competent directed, staged and photographed film, with lots of humour, fast paced action scenes that keeps the viewer totally entertained. The soundtrack is as good as the first one, with Bob Seger performing the main theme "Shakedown", written by Harold Faltermeyer (the composer behind the famous "Axel F." theme) & Keith Forsey, a song that became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.In short, it lacks the novelty and freshness of "Beverly Hills Cop", but it's still a very good sequel and an underrated film in the 80's cannon of action movies. Scott was always way ahead of its time and this movie was re-apreciated in later years as one of the first flicks that influenced the way action movies will be in the future... What is a shame is that there wasn't any action movie made in the last 20 years, that can even match what the late great Tony Scott did here...

After his friend "Andrew Bogomil" (Ronny Cox) is shot and critically injured in the line-of-duty in Beverly Hills, Detroit detective "Axle Foley" (Eddie Murphy) rushes to Los Angeles to help out in the investigation. Naturally, since he is out of his jurisdiction and has no authority to investigate this case he has to proceed under false pretenses and to do that he needs his friends "John Taggert" (John Ashton) and "Billy Rosewood" (Judge Reinhold) who happen to be Beverly Hills cops but also happen to be in deep trouble with their boss even before Axle's unexpected arrival. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, while this isn't necessarily a bad film, it suffers in comparison to its predecessor as a certain percentage of the comedy was simply recycled from the original movie. Likewise, there were some scenes which were unnecessarily vulgar as well. But again, it still managed to be fairly entertaining all things considered and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

When Detroit cop Axel Foley learns that his friend Captain Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department has been shot while investigating the so-called 'Alphabet Thieves' he tells his own boss that he is going deep, deep undercover on a local case before flying out to Los Angeles to help find those responsible. Once there he discovers that Rosewood and Taggart have been relegated to traffic duty by the officious new Chief of Police… inevitably this doesn't stop them investigating the thieves. It isn't too long before he figures out that Maxwell Dent is behind the crimes but it won't be easy to prove as he doesn't get personally involved; instead he leaves the dirty work to his assistant; the six foot blonde Karla Fry.After the success of the original 'Beverly Hills Cop' it was inevitable that there would be a sequel. I don't think this is quite as good as the first but it is still pretty good and has plenty of laughs. Eddie Murphy once again impresses as Axel Foley and Judge Reinhold and John Ashton make a welcome return as Rosewood and Taggart… there has been some amusing character development for Rosewood since we last saw him; he seems to have an unhealthy interest in weaponry which disturbs his partner. The criminals aren't quite as interesting as the original film; it is hard to believe that witnesses wouldn't have been able to help identify Brigitte Nielsen's Karla Fry. Some of the gags feel like rehashes of ones from the original film but that doesn't mean they don't work. Once again we have a gratuitous visit to a strip club and if that wasn't enough they have to gate-crash the Playboy Mansion where lots of bikini clad beauties are dancing around… as well as a cameo from Hugh Hefner himself. Given that Tony Scott took over the direction it isn't surprising that there is more action and that action is pretty impressive. Overall a decent enough sequel that fans of the original are likely to enjoy.

All the old token bits shoved in about tits and so on (it seems men must be a bit gay when a group of them sit around getting hard ons in a bar watching women stripping). Here we even have "sexy" blonde bimbos going with a guy just because he has a red sports car and giggling like Marilyn Monroe while giving him the sexy eye constantly.And random shots of girls dancing topless on poles(looking like they'd rather be elsewhere). Here Eddie even called one woman "bitch" while talking to other males about her (not the "bitch" that implies she was horrible, just "bitch" as in a name some men call the objects that are women (in the last movie they were chicks and other things). The pole stripper looked angry too like Eddie's character seems to be through this whole movie but men wouldn't notice since they were looking elsewhere (maybe Eddie didn't want to be there either which would explain his acting through this movie). And just for no reason we have the Playboy mansion involved.The rapid scene changes that cut out or abruptly ended dialog got boring too. There is one "memorable" scene where Eddie's character makes a bet that a cash exchange will be the next place robbed (after someone else told him about the place and they had a computer with the location on it - duh) and then he didn't even finish the sentence and it was cut to the next scene. Seems they just added bits where Eddie's character would be the one man hero of the piece guessing where crimes would happen next etc and then rushed to show us he was right. Or maybe they just edited bits because with all the tit conversations they went overtime and had to get rid of some parts.All the people shooting in this movie are so bad - the hit man who shoots at the ground as Axel runs away and the police who shoot out car lights. Axel couldn't hit a person in a car that wasn't moving but coincidentally hit all the targets at the shooting place and hit people when it suit the ridiculous plot.The first time Axel laughs the "Axel laugh" in the movie is like a setup also because there's staged silence and then the horrible laugh that anyone can fake. As if we were being rewarded for waiting by being given the token signature laugh by our hero. Other times when he laughed in the movie he would laugh normally and then go back to that laugh again as if someone else told him he swayed from the path of crazy fake laugh central. I think Eddie Murphy just phoned this one in and his wooden acting, inappropriate yelling, and inappropriate facial expressions for emotions show it. I guess he got paid either way and that is all that mattered.