The Action/Adventure Section — A regular column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
Tag Line: The richest city in the world. Shut down. Ripped off. Blown up.
There is no movie in the history of cinema that screams “1991!” more than The Taking of Beverly Hills. It is a movie that could only exist within the confines of that specific time and that specific place.
This, as it happens, is just one of its many charms…
Directed by old hand Sidney J. Furie (who yes, is responsible for Superman IV, but also made the excellent and underseen Hollow Point and Top Of The World, both of which are bound to show up here sooner or later), The Taking of Beverly Hills is a variation on the trusty Die Hard formula, with the Nakatomi Building replaced by Rodeo Drive and Bruce Willis being replaced by the dude from Wiseguy. In this version, Beverly Hills is evacuated when a chemical spill of toxic gas threatens the city. But of course, this is all a clever front so some dastardly thieves can rob the city blind. So right off the bat, we’re in fascinating waters here. The hero (and we’ll get to him in a minute) isn’t fighting for the oppressed. He is, in fact, doing his bit to make sure the rich remain rich.
Which is to be expected, when your hero is one of them himself.
Yes, instead of a blue collar, guy’s guy cop like John McClane, our hero is one Boomer Hayes, an NFL quarterback played in hilariously meatheaded fashion by Ken Wahl.
Introduced as being dryly contemptuous of the pomp and circumstance around his public appearance at a charity event, he is supposed to come off like “one of us” by way of his healthy disrespect for those hoity-toity types
Which is kind of bullshit, because as it’s pointed out later in the film, he makes two million dollars a season.
It’s also worth noting that Hayes isn’t evacuated with everyone else because he’s lounging around in a bubblebath… where he spends a solid twenty minutes of the film before the bad guys literally have to come to his front door to get him involved.
All right, let’s not kid ourselves here: this movie is dumb. But it’s dumb in a glorious, tongue in cheek, over the top way that’s endlessly entertaining.
Once Hayes gets in on the action, he joins up with Ed Kelvin (Matt Frewer), a wisecracking cop that switches from one of the thieves to one of the good guys when the bad guys break their “No violence” promise.
They then spend the rest of the movie running and driving away from explosions, until all of Beverly Hills is basically demolished, at which point the movie has little choice but to end.
So yeah, Hayes is kind of a bullshit character. He’s posing as the Everyman, but in reality all he’s doing is upholding the status quo. He’s foiling a plot that in 90% of modern day movies, would be hatched by the protagonists (in that sense, this movie is kind of like the evil twin of Tower Heist, where at the end Alan Alda throws Ben Stiller off the roof. And look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t watch the shit out of that…)
That any of this is at all palatable comes down to the goofy charm of Ken Wahl, who makes Hayes so endearingly dense and good natured that it’s easy to root for him, even though you know deep down that he represents the worst parts of sports hero worship and class conflict.
It helps a great deal that no one is taking any of this the least bit seriously. Everybody is having fun, from Matt Frewer doing his sardonic space cadet thing, to Lyman Ward as a corrupt police chief whose only regret is lacking a mustache to twirl; to Robert Davi as the main bad guy (spoiler alert for those of you who have never heard of Robert Davi before…) to Lee Ving, who… look, Lee Ving doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to. I’m just pumped whenever he shows up.
But I will give the “Victor Pryor Special Medal Of Honor/Awesomeness” to Branscombe Richmond, who Renegade fans will remember as the guy who is not Lorenzo Lamas. Richmond plays Benitez, a deadly assassin, which is a weird thing to need on a job that’s based entirely on Beverly Hills being completely deserted.
It’s even weirder to give that dude a tank…
I could go on and on about this one, but it might ruin the fun of discovery. The Taking Of Beverly Hills is a forgotten classic of early 90s action cinema. It’s like a Super Bowl commercial that went terribly, terribly off the rails, and that’s a very good thing.
Look: if Lee Ving, Max Headroom, Robert Davi, the other guy from Renegade and a fucking tank aren’t enough to get you into this, then all I have to tell you is this:
Chinese throwing stars may be involved.
And if THAT isn’t enough, then get the fuck out! Your kind isn’t wanted here.
Highly recommended…
