Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)

Film and Plot Synopsis

“Beverly Hills Cop II” is a 1987 action-comedy film directed by Tony Scott, starring Eddie Murphy as the wisecracking and resourceful Detroit detective Axel Foley. It serves as a sequel to the phenomenally successful 1984 film “Beverly Hills Cop” and continues the adventures of Axel Foley as he navigates the glamorous but dangerous world of Beverly Hills law enforcement. Picking up three years after the events of the first film, “Beverly Hills Cop II” sees Axel Foley reuniting with his old friends, Detective Billy Rosewood and Sergeant John Taggart, to take down a ruthless gang of counterfeiters.

‘Beverly Hills Cop II’ Movie Summary

The film opens with Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) working undercover in Detroit, investigating a series of robberies targeting high-end jewelry stores. However, when his close friend and fellow police officer, Captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox), is critically wounded in a shootout with the suspects in Beverly Hills, Axel decides to travel to the West Coast to lend his support. Upon his arrival, Axel reunites with his old friends Detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton), who are still working in the Beverly Hills Police Department. Axel suspects that Bogomil was shot because he was working an investigation that was getting close to the suspects. Axel, Taggart, and Rosewood begin working the investigation while Bogomil lies in a coma in a hospital.

Axel’s visit to Beverly Hills coincides with a string of violent crimes perpetrated by a sophisticated gang of criminals operating in the area known as the Alphabet Crimes. Led by the suave and ruthless Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow), the gang is responsible for a wave of armed robberies and other criminal activities, including the production and distribution of counterfeit money. At each of the crime scenes, the criminals leave a complicated riddle. Axel becomes determined to bring Dent and his associates to justice, despite resistance from the Beverly Hills Police Department.

As Axel investigates the case, he uncovers a complex web of corruption and deception reaching into the highest levels of Beverly Hills society. With the help of Rosewood and Taggart, Axel follows a series of leads that lead him closer to Dent and his criminal empire. Along the way, Axel faces numerous obstacles and challenges, including run-ins with Dent’s henchmen and friction with his superiors in the police department, including his captain back in Detroit, Inspector Douglas Todd (Gil Hill). While Axel’s unorthodox methods and irreverent attitude often clash with the more formal and by-the-book approach of the Beverly Hills cops, as they did in the first film, they ultimately come to respect his skills and dedication to solving the case.

After foiling an attempted robbery at a bank depot by Dent’s gang, Axel tricks Dent’s accountant Sidney Bernstein (Gilbert Gottfried) into letting him use his computer. Axel discovers that Dent and his lead henchwoman, Karla Fry (Bridget Nielsen), are planning to leave the country. Alex also learns from Bogomil’s daughter Jan (Alice Adair) that all of Dent’s businesses have had their insurance coverage canceled and are about to go bankrupt, except for his racetrack. Suspecting that Dent will rob his own racetrack, Axel and his friends rush to stop the robbery. Along the way, Axel solves the latest riddle sent to the police, and is convinced that the riddle was made easily solvable to implicate gunsmith Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell) as the Alphabet Bandit and throw the authorities off Dent’s trail.

Are you driving with your eyes open? Or are you, like, using “the force”? Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy)

Axel, Taggert, and Rosewood arrive too late to stop the robbery, and they find Cain, who was shot dead by Karla, among the bodies in the money room at the track. The inept police chief for the Beverly Hills Police Department, Chief Harold Lutz (Allen Garfield), announces publicly that the mastermind behind the Alphabet Crimes has been stopped. Axel notices some red mud at the stables around the track, linking it to some red mud that he found earlier in the film. The red mud leads Axel’s team to Dent’s oil field, where Dent is making his final arms deal with an arms dealer named Nikos Thomopolis (Paul Guilfoyle). Axel’s team gets into a shoot out with the criminals. They manage to destroy the trucks carrying the guns with explosives.

Axel pursues Dent into a warehouse. While Axel becomes temporarily distracted by a shooter on the roof, Dent tries to run down Axel with a car. Axel shoots Dent dead through the windshield, but the car still hits Axel. Disarmed, Axel is confronted by Karla who prepares to shoot Axel until the timely arrival of Taggert, who kills Karla. The police back-up finally arrives and arrests the rest of the remaining criminals, including Thomopolis. Lutz and the Mayor of Beverly Hills Ted Egan (Robert Ridgely) arrive as well. Lutz begins to chastise Rosewood and Taggert for disobeying orders. The pair stand up to their chief and prove that he was wrong about Cain being behind the Alphabet Crimes. They provide proof that Dent was the real Alphabet Bandit and that his crimes were about an arms deal. They successfully make their case and show Lutz’s incompetence. Mayor Egan fires Lutz and then thanks Axel, Taggert, and Rosewood for their service.

In the aftermath, Bogomil awakens from his coma and is chosen by Mayor Egan to replace Lutz as the new police chief. Mayor Egan also calls Inspector Todd to thank him for allowing Axel to assist the Beverly Hills Police Department. The call prompts Todd to chew Axel out over the phone and order him back to Detroit to get back to work.