Another 48 Hrs. (1990)
★★½ — Another 48 Hrs. (1990)
Eight years is a long time in Hollywood, and by the time Another 48 Hrs. arrived in cinemas in the summer of 1990, both the action-comedy genre and Eddie Murphy's career had shifted considerably. The original 48 Hrs. (1982) had been a genuine cultural moment, a film that helped define the buddy-cop formula while giving Murphy one of the most electric screen debuts in memory. A sequel was, commercially speaking, almost inevitable. Paramount Pictures, working alongside Eddie Murphy Productions and Lawrence Gordon Productions, brought back the full creative team for another run at the same San Francisco streets. The premise this time centres on cop Jack Cates chasing a shadowy drug lord known only as the Ice Man, a hunt that forces him back into an uneasy alliance with Reggie Hammond, who is on the verge of being released from prison and has apparently been marked for death. It is a workmanlike setup, functional if not particularly fresh, and the film wastes little time getting on with the business of noise and movement.
Walter Hill was, by 1990, a director with a serious body of work behind him. His lean, muscular approach to genre filmmaking had produced some genuinely memorable pictures, from the stylised urban mythology of The Warriors (1979) to the stripped-back cool of The Driver (1978). He was not a director you would ordinarily associate with going through the motions. The returning screenplay, credited to John Fasano, Jeb Stuart and Larry Gross, was reportedly a troubled production, with significant reshoots and editorial changes along the way, and whether or not those behind-the-scenes complications account for the film's uneven texture is a question that has followed it ever since. The budget, while not publicly confirmed in granular detail, was visibly spent on action set pieces, car chases and the kind of bar-wrecking chaos that became something of a signature for the series.
As for the cast, Murphy and Nick Nolte are joined by a solid supporting roster including Brion James, Kevin Tighe and Ed O'Ross, all reliable presences in American genre cinema of the period. Murphy, fresh from the enormous commercial success of Beverly Hills Cop (1984), was still very much a box-office force, and Nolte had by this point cemented himself as one of the more interesting mainstream actors of his generation. On paper, the pieces were all in place for a polished but unremarkable crowd-pleaser. Whether the film delivered on even those modest expectations is, of course, the real question.
Another 48 Hrs (1990) is s sequel that makes you appreciate the original all the more. A film that reunites Walter Hill with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy but somehow loses the alchemy that made the first outing crackle. Coming from a director whose filmography includes The Warriors, Southern Comfort, and the original 48 Hrs, this feels like a misfire: a by-the-numbers action-comedy that mistakes volume for wit and spectacle for substance. Eddie Murphy remains effortlessly charismatic, and there are flashes of the old magic in his banter with Nolte. The action sequences deliver kinetic energy. Car chases, shootouts, and an absurd amount of shattered glass in every bar fight (one wonders if the prop department bought shares in a glazier's union). But the dialogue rarely lands with the sharpness of the original; jokes feel recycled, the racial barbs lack the subversive edge that once gave the partnership its tension, and Nolte's Jack Cates has calcified into a cliché of the grizzled, rule-breaking cop, growling, scowling, and offering little beyond the silhouette of a character we once liked. The soundtrack has moments of cool, but it often feels mismatched to the on-screen chaos, a stylistic disconnect that mirrors the film's broader identity crisis. It wants to be gritty, it wants to be funny, it wants to be slick, but it never commits fully to any one tone. A disappointing outing from a director I deeply admire. Not without its moments, but ultimately a hollow echo of what came before.
I keep coming back to that word: alchemy. Some films have it and some films don't, and no amount of returning cast or familiar settings can manufacture it artificially. For me, Another 48 Hrs. is a useful reminder that sequels built on chemistry are among the hardest things to pull off in cinema, because chemistry, almost by definition, cannot be scheduled or reverse-engineered. I still have genuine affection for what Hill can do when everything clicks, and there are worse ways to spend ninety-five minutes if you are already a fan of the original. But if you have not seen the first film, start there and appreciate it properly before this one has a chance to slightly dull the shine.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1990 | Watched: 2026-04-01
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Walter Hill: 48 Hrs. (1982) · The Driver (1978) · The Warriors (1979)
More with Eddie Murphy: Beverly Hills Cop (1984) · 48 Hrs. (1982) · Mulan (1998) · Shrek 2 (2004)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
