What do actors and actresses who once enjoyed superstar status do once the limelight has faded?  In many respects, this is part of God’s plan for all our lives.  The Book of Ecclesiastes in its twelve chapters poetically details how our years come in stages, or what Taylor Swift might call “eras.”  I am sorry, I could not resist that popular culture joke.  One of the points of looking at our experiences in this manner is to understand best how to handle these transitions.  God is Lord of the living, which is another way of drawing ourselves to the present.  Reflection is not a bad thing, but an excessive amount can lead to regret.  Besides, there is nothing we can do about the past but learn from it.  Doing so leads to growth.  Since The Legionnaire is a Catholic film review blog, I am trying to tell you that taking lessons from what we have done can help us become closer to God.  Hollywood does things differently, and the Beverly Hills Cop franchise demonstrates how certain people in the movie industry cannot move on with their careers.  Instead, if something enjoys any success at the box office, executives believe that people will continue to return to theaters for roughly the same story.  It is in this spirit that I give you Beverly Hills Cop II (1987).

Though Detroit cop, Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), is the main franchise protagonist, we begin Beverly Hills Cop II in the eponymous area of Los Angeles.  A group of armed individuals storm a jewelry store, and with clockwork precision (meaning they are timing themselves), rob it.  These become known as the “Alphabet Robberies,” so called because of the cryptic messages left by the perpetrators.  The person who is beginning to sense a pattern to these crimes is Captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox).  Unfortunately, he and the two others in his division, Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) and Detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), are not popular with their current boss, Chief Harold Lutz (Allen Garfield).  With the news of the most recent heist coming in, and Captain Bogomil seemingly no further along in finding who is behind it, Chief Lutz threatens the three low ranking officers with their jobs.  This is all pretty standard cop movie stuff, and not a good example of Christian patience of Chief Lutz’s part.  Captain Bogomil had been talking about the case with his old friend, Detective Foley, but has to cancel a planned fishing trip where they might have parsed further details.  Instead, Captain Bogomil is shot by the same people who had broken into the business at the beginning of the film.  As Detective Foley is involved in his own investigations, he notices a news report indicating Captain Bogomil’s severe wounding at the hands of unknown assailants.  Out of loyalty to friends, which is a great Christian ideal, Detective Foley convinces his commanding officer, Inspector Douglas Todd (Gil Hill), that he is going to go deeper under cover in order to solve the case on which he is working.  The three days Detective Foley is given are just an excuse for him to travel to Beverly Hills to reunite with Sergeant Taggart and Detective Rosewood to figure out who is behind the attack on Captain Bogomil.  Just to contextualize Detective Foley’s character a little further, he talks his way into a Beverly Hills mansion, and in and out of many other situations.  It is not the most honest behavior, but this is meant to be a comedy.  Thus, after he obtains a house and convinces Sergeant Taggart and Detective Rosewood to help him despite the trouble the Los Angeles police officers are in, Detective Foley’s new investigation commences.  I am going to spare you the details here because there is little that separates this movie from others in the series, or any other film featuring cops and robbers.  The important element is that Detective Foley figures out pretty quickly that it is Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow), along with his assistant and girlfriend Karla Fry (Brigitte Nielsen), who are the ones carrying out these crimes.  Maxwell is businessman with many holdings, but his interests are beginning to lose money.  As such, he forms a partnership with Nikos Thomopolis (Paul Guilfoyle), an international arms dealer, in order to secure money for illegal weapons shipments.  With what Detective Foley and his companions are able to uncover, they are able to prevent some of Maxwell’s henchmen from making off with a large quantity of stolen money.  The problem is that it involves a large, destructive car chase that earns the ire of Chief Lutz.  While there is some praise that comes the three cops’ way for recovering the cash, Chief Lutz is still watching them closely.  The next job involves a race track owned by Maxwell, who sends another associate, Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell), to be involved in the break-in.  This is done as part of an effort to pin all the wrongdoing on Charles, who is murdered in the course of the robbery.  Chief Lutz arrives on the scene with a letter implicating Charles, and the supposed mastermind killed in the course of committing a crime.  Hence, Chief Lutz declares the Alphabet Robberies solved.  Detective Foley has other ideas.  Along with Sergeant Taggart and Detective Rosewood, they track an escaping Maxwell to a nearby warehouse where the guns are being loaded onto semi-trucks for eventual shipment to Costa Rica, where Maxwell hopes to flee.  Anyway, bang-bang, boom-boom, good guys win and bad buys lose.  Captain Bogomil, upon recovering, is tabbed to replace Chief Lutz, and Sergeant Taggart and Detective Rosewood see off Detective Foley.

There is not a lot to say about Beverly Hills Cop II, at least not in an uplifting manner.  After all, there is a scene in a strip club where the topless dancers are clearly transvestites.  That is not going to get a recommendation from a Catholic film reviewer.  The one good thing I can say about the film is Detective Foley’s loyalty to Captain Bogomil.  The Bible passage that comes to mind in reflecting on Detective Foley’s actions towards Captain Bogomil is John 15:13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Now, some of this needs to be understood in light of the first film, but the sequel has photographs of our four main cops together, along with phone calls with familiar sounding conversations, to give a sense of why Detective Foley would cross the country, and risk doing what John 15:13 suggests to his career and life for Captain Bogomil.  It is a little flimsy but the spirit is present, or should I say Spirit.  One of the things I get caught up in while talking about these movies is whether they mean to be overtly Catholic or Christian in what they are trying to convey.  Yet, God sees everyone, regardless of their faith.  The surest path to Heaven is through the Church, but it does not hurt to do virtuous deeds whether or not you believe in God.  It is hard to say that Detective Foley is virtuous in how he goes about helping his friend as discussed in the last paragraph.  At the same time, I am willing to believe that he would not hesitate to potentially die in the course of rendering assistance to his friends.  This is the point of John 15:13, but it does not necessarily mean one has to experience death.  It is the love you have for one another that counts the most.  For all Detective Foley’s bluster, it looks like he genuinely cares about Captain Bogomil.  God sees this, too.

I am not sure what else to touch on about Beverly Hills Cop II other than to say that it is vaguely unoriginal.  Taken together with the violence and the scene in the strip club, predictably I am not recommending this one.  Skip it.