ANOTHER 48 HRS, 1990
Movie Reviews!

For the past four years, San Francisco cop Jack Cates has been after an unidentified drug kingpin who calls himself the "Ice Man". At the Hunter's Point Raceway, Jack confronts Tyrone Burroughs and Arthur Brock. Jack kills Brock in self defense, but Burroughs escapes, and Jack is in danger of going to prison because Brock's gun can't be found. Jack finds a picture that proves that the Ice Man has put a price on the head of Reggie Hammond, who is scheduled to be released from prison on the next day. Jack tries to convince Reggie to help him clear his name and find the Ice Man, but Reggie says he won't help unless Jack gives Reggie the $500,000 that Jack has been holding on to for Reggie. Jack refuses to give Reggie the money unless Reggie helps him. After the bus that is transporting Reggie away from the prison is forced to crash by two bikers and Jack gets shot by the same two bikers, Jack forces Reggie to help him by having the hospital release Reggie into his custody...

REVIEW:

8 years later, they make a sequel. And the director and his two leading men are both back. Why did they make this film? Money and attempts to restructure everyone's careers.

48 HOURS 2 is a perfect storm of a film. Eddie Murphy was in decline and needed a box office hit in order for him to gain back his previous power in greenlighting his ideas and scripts. Nick Nolte had a pretty good career by 1990, playing dramatic roles ranging from playing a teacher, to a bum, to a professional football player. But he never hit it big, wiith the exception of the original 48HRs, which was his biggest hit of his career. (a funny thing happened to Nolte after acting in Another 48HRS. He went on to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world for about 4 years after his OSCAR nominated roles in Cape Fear, The Prince of Tides and Lorenzo's Oil. Safe to say that he had a great ride.)

And director Walter Hill didn't do much after 48 HOURS, helming medoicre film after medoicre film. He also wrote the original 48 HOURS and was perhaps angry at the many times his ideas and character creations were ripped off in many other films in the 1980s. And one of the many great ironies of ANOTHER 48HRS is that he didn't write one sentence of the script, but all of its storylines and situations were ripped off from many of his other written screenplay works. I wondered what he was feeling when he was directing this film? Was he laughing or crying at the many scenes that were stolen from him in the past? Well at least he was directing them!

Nick Nolte was quoted many times saying that ANOTHER 48 HOURS was a film about cash for the cast and creators. They weren't proud of what they were making, but went to work everyday because they were making a lot of money. He said he has never been more ashamed from a movie he's been in and it changed his outlook on acting. Since then, Nolte has said he would only be in movies that he was passionate about. And if you look at his body of work since ANOTHER 48HRS, you can see that he has done many indepentant films and has rarely gone back to Hollywood. The only exception for him was to work with like minded directors who were able to work within the system while also be able to create their own vision.

So, they all did it for the money!

If you play the original film and this film on two different monitors at the same time, you're going to have a hard time seeing the difference because it's basically the same film.

- Criminals kill cops in first scenes

- Nolte gets in sticky situation, shoots his gun and gets into trouble with his bosses for doing so.

- Nolte goes rogue and gets convict Reggie Hammond out of prison to help him take down criminals who killed the cops.

- Funny bar scene with Eddie Murphy in a white dominated place. Murphy does his "I hate white people schitck" and we all laugh.

- Nolte and Murphy hit the streets of San Francisco to track down bad guys. There first stop is to talk to the hookers who slept with them.

- Nolte gets deeper into trouble with his bosses as Murphy looks to track down his money while also attempting to have sex.

- 3rd act climax occurs with big gun fight. Bad guys go down.

The 7 MAIN PLOT POINTS occur in both films and almost the same time as the film is the exact same length.