Beverly Hills Cop II

Beverly Hills Cop II is a 1987 American action comedy film directed by Tony Scott, written by Larry Ferguson and Warren Skaaren and starring Eddie Murphy. It is the sequel to the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop and the second installment 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 first film and received mixed reviews from critics, the film was still a box office success, making $153.7 million domestically. Aside from box office success, the film was nominated for an Oscar and for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, for Bob Seger's "Shakedown".

Plot
Beverly Hills Police Captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox), Detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), and Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) 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 (Allen Garfield), who is doing everything he can to stay on Mayor Ted Egan's (Robert Ridgely) 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 (Brigitte Nielsen), the chief enforcer of Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow), who is secretly the mastermind behind the Alphabet Crimes. After hearing about the shooting on a news report, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) secretly abandons his current undercover duties and immediately flies out to Beverly Hills to help find out who shot Bogomil, finding Taggart and Rosewood all too happy to assist him.

Posing as an undercover FBI agent to get past Lutz with the aid of Detective Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser), Axel soon makes the connection between the robberies and Dent. He first finds out that the ammunition fired at one of the robberies was made by Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell), the manager of a gun club owned by Dent. Axel has Bogomil's daughter Jan (Alice Adair) 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 (Paul Guilfoyle) 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, Axel tricks Dent's accountant Sidney Bernstein (Gilbert Gottfried) into letting him use his computer, discovering 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 racetrack. Hurrying to the racetrack, 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 and throw the authorities off Dent's trail. The trio arrive too late to prevent the robbery and find Cain, shot by Karla, 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. The car hits Axel and goes down a hill, erupting in flames. 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 on the scene and arrest the remainder of Dent's goons and Thomopolis. Lutz and Mayor Egan come as well. Lutz tries to fire Rosewood and Taggart for their insubordination and arrest Axel. However, both Taggart and Rosewood stand up to an infuriated Lutz and prove that Dent was the real Alphabet Bandit and the rest of the alphabet crimes were about the arms deal. They are also able to convince Mayor Egan of Lutz's incompetence, and the Mayor fires Lutz for his abusive attitude towards his own men.

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 (Gil Hill) over the phone, after Egan called Todd to congratulate him on allowing Axel to assist them on this case.

Cast

 * Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley
 * Judge Reinhold as Billy Rosewood
 * Jürgen Prochnow as Maxwell Dent
 * John Ashton as John Taggart
 * Ronny Cox as Andrew Bogomil
 * Brigitte Nielsen as Karla Fry
 * Allen Garfield as Harold Lutz
 * Brian O'Connor as Biddle
 * Dean Stockwell as Charles Cain
 * Gil Hill as Inspector Todd
 * Gilbert Gottfried as Sidney Bernstein
 * Paul Reiser as Jeffrey Friedman
 * Paul Guilfoyle as Nikos Thomopolis
 * Robert Ridgely as Mayor Ted Egan
 * Alice Adair as Jan Bogomil
 * Glenn Withrow as Willie
 * Tom Bower as Russ Fielding
 * Hugh Hefner as Himself
 * Chris Rock as Parking Valet
 * Robert Pastorelli as Vinnie
 * Tommy 'Tiny' Lister as Orvis
 * John Hostetter as Stiles

Production
Paramount Pictures had planned a television series based on the first film. Murphy turned down the series but was willing to do a sequel. Producers Simpson and 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 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", a number 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. 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" (#42 on the Hot 100), 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. Harold 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 200 albums 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, despite it going on to achieve a platinum certification for sales by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Box office
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 the film achieving that year's highest-opening weekend debut, as well as the highest grossing opening weekend of all time at the time. 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.

Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 45% "rotten" rating, based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 4.82/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Eddie Murphy remains appealing as the wisecracking Axel Foley, but Beverly Hills Cop II doesn't take him – or the viewer – anywhere new enough to justify a sequel". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Desson Howe of The Washington Post called it "a sequel that's as good as the original, if not better." Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four 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 the film is a 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."

"Beverly Hills Cop II was probably the most successful mediocre picture in history," Murphy said. "It made $250 million worldwide, and it was a half-assed movie. Cop II was basically a rehash of Cop I, but it wasn't as spontaneous and funny."

Accolades
Nominations
 * Academy Awards
 * Best Original Song for "Shakedown"
 * Golden Globe Awards
 * Best Original Song for "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 "I Want Your Sex"
 * Kids' Choice Awards
 * Favorite Movie
 * Favorite Movie Actor for Eddie Murphy