Beverly Hills Cop II is a 1987 action comedy film starring Eddie Murphy and directed by Tony Scott. It is the first sequel in the Beverly Hills Cop series. Murphy returns as Detroit police detective Axel Foley, who reunites with Beverly Hills detectives Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to stop a robbery/gun-running gang after Captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) is shot and seriously wounded.
Although it made less money than the original Beverly Hills Cop and received mixed reviews from critics, the film was still a box office success, making $153,665,036 domestically. Aside from box office success, the film was nominated for an Academy Award and for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, for the Bob Seger song "Shakedown".
Plot[]
Beverly Hills Police Department 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, egotistical, 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 the chief 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 henchwoman and fiance of Maxwell Dent. Finding out about the shooting over a news report, Detroit Police Department detective Axel Foley abandons his undercover duties and immediately flies out to Beverly Hills to help find out who shot Bogomil. Taggart and Rosewood agree to assist Axel 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, Axel 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 the manager of a gun club owned by Dent. Axel 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 his henchman Charles 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, Axel 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. Axel 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, Axel 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, Axel 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's body among those killed. While Lutz announces publicly that the Alphabet Crimes have been solved, Axel 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 Axel in the warehouse, but Axel 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 Axel shoots Dent through the windshield, sending his car down a hill and erupting in flames, after running Axel over. Karla appears and is about to kill Axel, but is shot dead by Taggart.
Just as the last criminals are about to flee, the police arrive upon the scene, arresting the remainder of Dent's men and Thomopolis. After Lutz and Mayor Egan arrive, an infuriated Lutz tries to fire Rosewood and Taggart for their insubordination, and also tries to arrest Axel. However, both Taggart and Rosewood stand up to Lutz this time and prove that Dent was the real Alphabet Bandit and that the alphabet crimes were about an arms deal. They are also able to convince Mayor Egan of Lutz's incompetence (as Lutz would have interfered if he had known about their activities, as he intentionally ignores the truth from other cops), and Mayor Egan personally fires Lutz because he is tired of his "abusive attitude" towards his own men and for jepordazing the investigation
Mayor Egan chooses Bogomil to replace Lutz as the new Police Chief. Axel 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 Axel to assist them on this case.
Cast[]
- Eddie Murphy as Detective Axel Foley
- Judge Reinhold as Detective Billy Rosewood
- John Ashton as Sergeant John Taggart
- Jürgen Prochnow as Maxwell Dent
- Ronny Cox as Captain Andrew Bogomil
- Brigitte Nielsen as Karla Fry
- Allen Garfield as Chief Harold Lutz
- Brian O'Connor as Biddle
- Dean Stockwell as Charles "Chip" Cain
- Paul Reiser as Detective Jeffrey Friedman
- Gilbert Hill as Inspector G. Douglas Todd
- Tom Bower as Russell Fielding
- Paul Guilfoyle as Nikos "Nik" Thomopolis
- Robert Ridgely as Mayor Ted Egan
- Tommy 'Tiny' Lister as Orvis
- Chris Rock as Playboy Mansion Valet
- Hugh Hefner as Himself
- Ola Ray as Playmate
- Gilbert Gottfried as Sidney Bernstein
- Robert Pastorelli as Vinnie
- Glenn Withrow as Willie
- Larry Fox as Connor
Production[]
Paramount Pictures had planned a television series based on the first film. Eddie Murphy refused the series but was willing to do a sequel. Producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer hired Tony Scott to direct due to his success with the 1986 blockbuster film Top Gun. The film was originally to be set and filmed in London and Paris; however, the script was re-written after Eddie Murphy expressed a reluctance to film outside the United States.
Soundtrack[]
The song "Hold On" as sung by Keta Bill plays during the scene wherein Axel, Rosewood, and Taggart confront Dent at the Playboy Mansion. However, the film's soundtrack CD released by MCA Records includes only a different song entitled "Hold On," sung by Corey Hart. This song has different music and slightly altered lyrics. The film introduced George Michael's controversial song "I Want Your Sex". It also includes "Cross My Broken Heart" by The Jets (a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100) and "Shakedown" by Bob Seger which became a No. 1 hit on that same chart, as well as "Better Way" performed by James Ingram. The Pointer Sisters scored a moderate hit with "Be There," their single from the soundtrack. It was the second time the sisters had contributed to the Beverly Hills Cop franchise; they'd notched a top 10 single with "Neutron Dance" from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. As with the first film, none of Harold Faltermeyer's soundtrack score has ever been released. However, Faltermeyer's 1988 album, Harold F, includes a song called "Bad Guys", which is used as part of the film's score—an instrumental section of the song plays during the opening jewelry store robbery scene, and also during several other scenes throughout the film.
The soundtrack debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard charts and spent 26 weeks on the charts, a far cry compared to the 49 weeks spent by the first film's soundtrack. Despite this, one song from the album, "Shakedown", was nominated for an Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. However, another song from the album, "I Want Your Sex", won the Razzie Award for Worst Song.
- "Shakedown" - Bob Seger
- "Be There" - Pointer Sisters
- "In Deep" - Charlie Sexton
- "Hold On" - Corey Hart
- "I Want Your Sex" - George Michael
- "Better Way" - James Ingram
- "Love/Hate" - Pebbles
- "Cross My Broken Heart" - The Jets
- "36 Lovers" - Ready for the World
- "I Can't Stand It" - Sue Ann
- "All Revved Up" - Jermaine Jackson
Reception[]
Beverly Hills Cop II was one of the most anticipated films of 1987 and became a box office success upon release, despite not making as much as Beverly Hills Cop. The film debuted at No. 1, earning $33 million on its opening weekend, a sales mark that would result in its being that year's highest-opening weekend debut. Beverly Hills Cop II made approximately $153,665,036, becoming the third biggest hit domestically at the box office that year, after Fatal Attraction and Three Men and a Baby, and the second highest-grossing film worldwide that year, behind Fatal Attraction.
The film received a mixed reception. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 46% of 26 surveyed critics gave it a positive review; the average rating is 4.9/10. Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score, rated it 48/100 based on 11 reviews. Desson Howe of The Washington Post called it "a sequel that's as good as the original, if not better." Roger Ebert rated it 1/4 stars and wrote, "What is comedy? That's a pretty basic question, I know, but Beverly Hills Cop II never thought to ask it." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that it is skillful clone of the first film that can't match that one's novelty or excitement. Variety called it "a noisy, numbing, unimaginative, heartless remake of the original film." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "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 picture as crude, as muddled, as destructo-Derbyish as this one."
Accolades[]
Academy Awards Best Original Song for the song "Shakedown" Golden Globe Awards Best Original Song for the song "Shakedown" Awards ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards Most Performed Song From Motion Pictures for the song "Shakedown" Razzie Awards Worst Original Song for George Michael for the song "I Want Your Sex" Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Movie Favorite Movie Actor for Eddie Murphy