Way back in the dark ages – or more accurately, 1984 – a movie arrived that not only teed up Lethal Weapon to perfect the buddy action movie, but literally created an overnight sensation by letting a nineteen year old Eddie Murphy to shoot his mouth off and trade acidic, macho barbs with a granite-larynxed Nick Nolte. The movie was Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. and it sort of became the epitome of the kind of hard talkin’, hard brawlin’ action/thriller that now usually pops up loaded with trigger warnings whenever is surfaces on a modern day streaming site.
This phenomenon is well earned as, alongside a plethora of sexist and misanthropic swear words being tossed around, there’s frequent usage of a particularly infamous N-Word too – and that’s just from Nolte and Murphy.
Simply put, such a film simply wouldn’t be made today – however, it still could in the early days of the 1990s, and so, whether people liked it or not, we got another 48 Hrs. named, appropriately enough – Another 48 Hrs..
Years after the team of detective Jack Cates and criminal Reggie Hammond shot up half of San Francisco and swore bitterly at the other half, we find the former continuing a four year Hunt for a mystery crime kingpin known only as the Iceman, but when his latest lead literally goes up in a ball of flame (gotta watch those stray bullets, Jack), he finds himself targeted by Internal Affairs for his reckless, shooty bang bang attitude. However, another lead rears its head when he finds out that the Iceman has hired crazed biker duo Richard Ganz and Willie Hickok to carry out a hit on Reggie. Now, seeing as Richard is the brother of the dude Cates and Hammond shot to shit at the end if the last movie, it’s not to surprising that he took this job, but why does the Iceman want Reggie dead?
Jack figures that if he can figure that out, he’ll have the Iceman cold (little pun, there) and so when Reggie’s ludicrously extended sentence is finished, he’s waiting there with yet another ultimatum: work with Jack for 48 hours to bring down the Iceman and he’ll finally get his hands on that loot he stole years earlier.
With that old animosity bubbling up to the surface once again, both Reggie and Jack get on each other’s nerves as much as the various villains that are trying to blow baseball-sized holes in them wherever they turn; but can they finally work together in order for Reggie to get his money and Jack avoid jail time for his reckless, shoot first, ask questions never style of police work?
Shit, judging by the way these two are fighting, I don’t think 48 hours is going to be enough.
The first film seemed to take pride in just how gritty it was trying to be as it took tropes that were already cliche back in the 80s and revitalized them by pebble dashing them with as much anti-social shit it possibly could and the result was a fantastically hard-edged classic. In comparison, Another 48 Hrs turned out to be something of a disapointment as it merely recycled large swathes of the orginal in order to reverse manufacture the wit and broken-toothed charm of the original. However, that’s what I originally thought in the 90s. Now I was more surprised than anyone else that thanks to its ridiculously exagerated nature, Walter Hill’s originality-starved sequel now feels like some busted-knuckled parody that somehow has become super watchable.
I mean, it’s fairly redundant shit if we’re being super honest, but the fact that Hill doubles down on the macho stuff at the start of a decade where action movies were starting to clean up their act is actually quite hilarious. Maybe this is what Hill was actually aiming for (although if he was, he’d have a similar scatterehot aim as everyone in this movie who ever fires a gun), or maybe after helming a couple of blockbusters, that’s just the mode he was in but as the film starts to veer into self mockery the more absurdly watchable it becomes.
The tropes literally count off as you watch them. Stray bullets cause explosions that strip the skin of a screaming crook but doesn’t even give Nolte a tan; Murphy is in a prison bus that flips an insane number of times while not even bring close to a seatbelt and only gets a minor concussion; the film possibly has more needlessly shattering glass than any other movie in history as every single person who catches a bullet simply isn’t allowed to die unless they’re hurled through a least one plate glass window.
The plot is only a slight variation of the first movie, only with a mystery bad guy thrown in to slightly spice up the story and while this isn’t that detrimental (isn’t Die Hard 2 just the first movie but with more planes?), the fact that Hill also chooses to recycle jokes is also something of a bug bear and with the mention of jokes, this brings us inevitably to Eddie Murphy. In the first film, Murphy was a hungry newcomer who stole the entire fucking movie from everybody with an assault of charm so powerful, his charisma should have been registered as a WMD. However, by the 1990s, Murphy was now a global superstar thanks to a couple of Beverly Hills Cop movies and as a result, Reggie Hammond now feels a little toned down to be much more like the cheeky Axel Foley rather than the enraged young black man that terrorized a redneck bar with a borrowed police badge. He’s still funny – it’s Eddie fucking Murphy for God’s sake – but as fun as it is to watch him redo some of his schtick from the first film (he sings to James Brown as well as The Police this time), the feeling that he’s trying to regain some of his former glory after the frosty reception given to the likes of The Golden Child is a bit too obvious.
However, while Murphy mugs for all he’s worth, he’s surrounded by an embarrassment of character actor riches who are all on top, clench-jawed form. Yes, Nolte is probably here for the pay check, but no one does grizzled like he does as he deliveres his lines like Ben Grimm has strep throat and joining him is Brion James (who’s brought his shitty hairpiece from the first movie with him), Ed O’ Ross, Kevin Tighe and, as one of the maniacal bikers, we even have Andrew Divoff. In fact, considering that all his movies are essentially westerns in disguise, there’s a sneaking suspicion that Hill probably wanted to spend way more time with two motorcycle revving outlaws while liken their existence to the gunslinger of the old west, but was corralled by the restrictions of sequel moviemaking.
Many decry the film as being inferior thanks to being loud, dumb and totally obnoxious (but no N-words, so that’s something); but while these complaints aren’t technically incorrect, a reassessment may transform your opinion of it into a gun blazing good time – it just might take a little longer than another 48 hours…
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We Have Issues 
I think that Another 48 Hours set a most specific tone for how movie sequels for the 90s, indeed for the action genre, would play out for better or worse. It had a good mystery with the investigation into the “Iceman”. And Cates’ drama with Wilson, certainly in Nick Nolte’s dialogue in one most important scene between them, was relatively interesting. Eddie Murphy of course finds his best ways to shine as far as some of his sequels have gone. Thank you for your review.
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