15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
There's gotta be a better way, August 6, 2000
Long ago, when Eddie Murphy was the biggest star in Hollywood, Beverly Hills Cop 2 was the most anticipated film of 1987. Movies like Trading Places and 48 Hours made Murphy famous. But Axel Foley made him a superstar. Impressed by Top Gun (even though it's a truly awful film), Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer brought Tony Scott on board to direct. What they forgot to do was polish the script.
Foley returns to Beverly Hills to help solve 'The Alphabet Crimes' after his old pal Lt. Bogomil is gunned down in the street. With Taggart and Rosewood in tow (now actually doing police work instead of standing by) Axel uncovers a seriously convoluted conspiracy.
The story should have taken a back seat to allow Murphy to work over the massive holes in the plot with his distracting wisecracks. I won't lie to you, there are some utterly horrible contrivances in BHC2 (Bogomil's daughter digging up dirt at the insurance company she just happens to work at is honestly the most obnoxious movie coincidence of all time), but you'll just have to suffer them.
This might have been easy to overlook, but Tony Scott, still finding his feet as a director, and his editors turn a great deal of the film into an incomprehensible mess. Some of the continuity errors are just baffling (where did Rosewood get the coffee cup from at the night club crash scene?) and it makes the action quite hard to follow.
However, Tony Scott's highly visual style of filmmaking is far more suiting to this kind of environment. The wealth and decadence of late 80s California is all over this movie, and it's the only aspect where it improves on the original. I doubt the latter day Scott would make the movie this way, but it's definitely the best looking of the trilogy. It's also the only one to be shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio (however it's Super35 instead of the superior anamorphic Panavision format).
The DVD looks horrible. It really ought to be on Blu Ray.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite as good as the first, but still worth it., February 10, 2003
It's hard to repeat the same magic over again, and perhaps this film best states that. Tony Scott directs this time around and while he made this one flashier and more action-packed than its predecessor, he doesn't quite handle it as well as Martin Brest did. Still, Eddie Murphy is funny as ever and delivers many memorable performances. Judge Reinhold and John Ashton are also onboard and are in fine form. To sum it all up, the performances are great (with Paul Reiser having a larger role than before) and the visual style is WOW. But the plot is very thin this time around and the film drags towards the end. It doesn't hold a candle to the first one, but stands alright on its own. Just watch and enjoy.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Axel Foley's second go round, March 19, 2001
Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) returns to Beverly Hills to take on thugs after his police captain friend Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) is shot and wounded. Flashy sequel is never boring but there are several problems: Murphy is loud and obnoxious, timid by the book cop Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) is now a gun freak who never questions authority, and Bogomil is seen at the beginning of the film happily chatting with Foley about a fishing trip, despite the fact that he ran Foley out of town at the conclusion of the previous film. The action sequences are pretty overkill and come off as exhausting rather than exhilarating. The "Alphabet Bandit" scenario is pretty cartoonish. Mindless entertainment but this was 1987's top grosser, so you decide.
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