Beverly Hills Cop II - Plot

Plot

In a scenario set approximately two years after the original film, Beverly Hills Police Captain (formerly Lieutenant) 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 an 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 him that Rosewood was only following a hunch, a traditional aspect of police work. 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 hench-woman of Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow). Finding out about the shooting by a news report, Axel Foley (Murphy) immediately flies out to Beverly Hills (covering his absence from his actual job in Detroit by telling his commanding officer Inspector Todd (Gil Hill) he is going "deep deep deep DEEP undercover" on the credit card fraud case he had been assigned to) to help find out who shot Bogomil, to repay the favor he owes Bogomil for saving his job two years ago. Taggart and Rosewood agree to assist Foley because of Lutz's apparent attempts to find an excuse to get them fired.

Posing as an undercover FBI agent to get past Lutz (by getting his would-be partner Jeffrey Friedman in Detroit to pose as Todd, and intercept Lutz's phone call to Todd's office, to convince Lutz that Foley is part of a multi-jurisdictional task force), Foley soon starts making the connection between the robberies and Dent. Foley 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 deals and is discreetly using his henchman Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell) 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, Foley is able to trick Dent's accountant Sidney Bernstein (Gilbert Gottfried) into using his computer and discovers that Dent and Karla are planning to leave the country. Foley 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, Foley 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, although Foley, after meeting him earlier, knows Cain is a patsy designed to throw the authorities off of Dent's trail.

The three arrive too late to stop the robbery and find Cain's body (he was shot by Karla) among those killed. While Lutz announces publicly that the Alphabet Crimes have been solved, Foley 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. The three get into a shootout with everyone involved in the deal. Dent confronts Foley in the warehouse, but Foley 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 Foley shoots Dent through the windshield, sending his car down a hill and erupting in flames, after running Foley over. Karla appears and is about to kill Foley, but is shot dead by Taggart.

Just as the last thugs are about to flee, the police arrive upon the scene, along with Lutz and Mayor Egan. Lutz tries to fire Rosewood and Taggart for their insubordination, and also tries to arrest Foley. However, both Taggart and Rosewood stand up to Lutz this time and prove that Dent was the real Alphabet Bandit. They are also able to convince Mayor Egan of Lutz's incompetence, and the Mayor personally fires Lutz because he is tired of his abusive attitude towards his own men.

At the end of the film, Bogomil is chosen by Mayor Egan to replace Lutz as the new Chief of Police, and Foley returns to Detroit, but not before he gets chewed out by Inspector Todd over the phone, right after Egan called Todd to congratulate him on allowing Foley to assist them on this case.