Another 48 Hrs.(1990)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

SHORT VERSION:
Inspector Kehoe is the Iceman. He wants Reggie killed not because of the $500,000 he stole from him, but because, since Reggie is now out of prison, he can identify him and blow his cover. Inspector Cruise is also in league with Kehoe, and on Kehoe’s orders, he hid the gun Brock used against Jack in their earlier shootout and gotten Jack charged with manslaughter because he was getting close to the truth and Kehoe needed leverage on him. Kehoe eventually kills Ganz’s and Hickok’s fellow gang member Price to keep him from being questioned by Jack, and Ganz and Hickok confront Kehoe’s crony Burroughs about it and demand to know who the Iceman is (since they have never seen Kehoe yet), but he won’t tell them. Before they kill him, he tells them all about Reggie’s debt to his former fellow inmate Kirkland and how his repayment of that debt will involve Kirkland’s daughter, Amy.

Jack eventually gives Reggie back his money and tells him to disappear, but as he is dropping off $75,000 of it to Amy on behalf of Kirkland, Ganz and Hickok capture them both. They later get in touch with Cruise at the precinct and – thinking that he is the Iceman – demand $500,000 for Reggie’s death because Price was killed, and they agree to meet up that night at the Cage Club, located on the fifth floor of the Bird Cage strip club, to close the deal. Around this time, Burroughs’ body is found, and since his face matches a composite sketch that Jack has been circulating around the precinct, Inspector Stevens lets Jack know about it. When Jack remarks that he circulated his picture earlier and got nothing, Stevens tells him that Cruise had busted him in the past. Thinking that Cruise is the Iceman, Jack follows him when he heads for the club.

Jack finds Reggie, Amy, Ganz, Hickok, and Cruise in the Cage Club, and Reggie suddenly spots the Iceman and points him out to the others, after which Kehoe reveals himself. In the ensuing gunfight, Jack kills Cruise and Reggie kills Hickok, and Reggie also kills Ganz by sending him falling out of a window to his death. Kehoe then takes Reggie hostage and confronts Jack, but Jack soon shoots Reggie on the right side of his chest. After the shocked Kehoe lets the equally-shocked Reggie fall to the floor, Jack guns down Kehoe.

As Reggie is about to be loaded into an ambulance bound for the hospital, Jack tells him that he will be just fine, then shows him that he has the bag containing the $500,000 that Cruise brought and tells him that he will meet him later at the hospital to talk more about it.

LONG VERSION:
Jack (Nick Nolte) and Reggie (Eddie Murphy) track down “Cherry” Ganz’s (Andrew Divoff) old fling Angel (Page Leong) to the King Mei Hotel, hoping to catch both him and Hickok (David Anthony Marshall) there since Reggie knows that Ganz will undoubtedly visit her for a quick tryst and share Hickok with her. However, the situation devolves into a shootout between both sides, and Ganz and Hickok are able to get out of the hotel and escape on their motorcycles. After the police come to investigate the scene, Inspector Cruise (Ed O’Ross) speaks with Jack and tells him that he ran the computer-generated composite sketch that Inspector Kehoe (Brion James) gave him of the guy he is looking for (who is Burroughs [Brent Jennings]) through the NCIC (National Crime Information Center), but he couldn’t come up with a match. Jack and Reggie then speak with Angel and find out that, while she can’t personally get in touch with Ganz or Hickok, she knows that they have a contact named Malcolm Price (Ted Markland), and no one talks to Ganz without talking to him first. However, she doesn’t know where Price is. Jack and Reggie then get into the former’s car, but when Cruise attempts to stop them to get a statement from Jack about the hotel incident, Jack tells him to radio back to Kehoe and have him run up a sheet on Price because he likely has a long record.

Jack and Reggie then go to the prison where Reggie served his sentence in order to speak with Kirkland (Bernie Casey) – the man who protected Reggie during his sentence when the Iceman and his crew put a hit out on him and to whom Reggie owes an unstated debt to for that protection – in the hopes of getting more information on Price and the man in the picture since he knows a lot about most of the criminals in the city. They first show him the picture, and he tells them that the guy is Burroughs and that he is a small-time dealer who was recruited by the Iceman a couple of months ago. As for Price, he explains that is a member of the Western Brotherhood motorcycle gang that Ganz and Hickok belong to, and if you want one of the gang members to carry out a hit for you, you have to go through Price, and he can be found at the Sunset Motel. He then speaks to Reggie alone and angrily orders him to repay his debt to him.

In the next scene, an unknown man is shown paying Price a visit at his motel room, but after Price invites the man inside, the man kills him with multiple gunshots. His body is later found and brought to the morgue, and Inspector Stevens (Edward Walsh) summons Jack there so he can see the body as proof of his demise. After he and Reggie do so, Jack remarks to Stevens that, every time he has gotten close to the Iceman these last three years, it ends up being just another dead end. Reggie soon tells Jack that he has come to the conclusion that the Iceman is a cop; Jack called his precinct for Price’s address and the Iceman got there first, and he has also gotten no information back from the NCIC on Burroughs despite the fact that more than enough time has passed for him to get it. He then explains to Jack that the Iceman wants to kill him not because of the money he took but because he has seen him; now that he is back on the streets, he can identify him and blow his cover. He tells Jack that, because he is working this case, he can probably find the Iceman just by finding the cop who has been giving him the most resistance. Jack thus deduces that Lt. Wilson (Kevin Tighe) is the guilty party since he has been dogging him ever since he first started looking for the Iceman. Jack then takes Reggie to the court hearing that is determining if Jack will be subjected to a criminal trial on charges of third-degree manslaughter for the earlier death of Brock, and he points out Wilson to Reggie. However, Reggie informs him that Wilson isn’t the Iceman, and as Jack vehemently tries to tell Reggie that that has to be him, the judge informs Jack that he has decided that there is sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial against him starting on the first available date on the court calendar. This decision also causes Jack to lose his badge.

Meanwhile, Ganz and Hickok meet with Burroughs and inform him that they know that the Iceman killed Price, and Burroughs tells them that he had to do it because Angel ratted Price out to the police and he didn’t want him questioned about anything. They order Burroughs to tell them who the Iceman is, and when Burroughs refuses, Ganz shoots his left ear. Burroughs manages to laugh off the pain, and he tells them that this still doesn’t change their mission to kill Reggie. Hickok asks how they are going to do that, and Burroughs replies by telling them about Kirkland and the debt that Reggie owes him, and he says that he has figured out how Reggie intends to pay him back and that it will involve his daughter Amy (Tisha Campbell). After he provides Ganz and Hickok with the address of the goodwill store where Amy works, Ganz tells him that they are going to kill Jack, Reggie, AND the Iceman, and then Hickok blows him away.

Jack goes to his locker with Reggie to clear it out, and he takes out a police bag and tells Reggie that his $475,000 is in it (down from the original $500,000 because Jack took some of it in order to buy a car and put a down payment on his house). After Reggie looks and sees that it is all in there, Jack tells him just to take the money and disappear, and Reggie soon leaves. Not long after, Reggie approaches Amy at her workplace and drops off $75,000 of his money for her, saying that he owed this money to her father and Kirkland thought it would benefit her more, and before he goes, he tells her to go visit her father. Suddenly, Ganz and Hickok appear and kidnap them both, and Reggie loses all of his money in the process. Jack is next seen clearing out his desk, and he is paid a visit from Kehoe, who apologizes for not being able to help him more than he did on this case. Shortly afterward, Cruise is handed a bunch of messages from Stevens, and after one looks noticeably concerning to him, he calls the number provided on the message. Hickok picks up on the other end, revealing that Cruise is in on the plot against Reggie, and he informs Cruise that he and Ganz have captured Reggie. However, since they are unhappy that Price got bumped off, they tell him that they now want $500,000 for Reggie’s death or else they will let Reggie expose him, seemingly revealing him as the Iceman. Cruise tells him that he will deliver the money to them in person, but only in an indoor place where there are lots of people around, and they agree to meet in the elite Cage Club located on the fifth floor of the Bird Cage strip club. Stevens then approaches Jack and tells him that they just found Burroughs’ body and he looks like the guy in the picture that he is after, then presents him with his rap sheet. Jack says that he circulated his picture at the precinct last night and got nothing, and Stevens remarks that that is odd because Cruise busted him in the past. Realizing that Cruise might be the Iceman, Jack notices him leaving and decides to follow him, but not before hitting Wilson with a knockout punch when he expresses insincere remorse over him losing his job.

Cruise heads over to the Bird Cage carrying the $500,000 payment in a bag and heads up to the Cage Club, and he finds Ganz and Hickok keeping Reggie and Amy seated in a private area. After Cruise shows Hickok that he has the money, he orders both Reggie and Amy to be taken out behind the building and shot. Having been told by Ganz that the Iceman would be bringing him his money for the hit, Reggie informs Cherry that Cruise is not the guy, and then Jack appears and confirms that, having just found out who the Iceman really is. Suddenly, Reggie points behind Ganz and exclaims that THAT man is the Iceman, and out steps Kehoe from behind a support column. Jack tells Ganz and Hickok that all he wants is the Iceman and they can just take their money and go, but Ganz flips out and yells that HE wants the Iceman, then shoots a few bullets at Kehoe. All of his shots miss, though, and then Hickok fires at Jack, but misses him as well. Cruise then hits Hickok in the face to get away from him while Reggie grabs Amy and takes shelter behind a bar with her and the patrons and staff run for their lives. As the various characters start shooting each other, Reggie kills Hickok and Jack kills Cruise, and after Jack shoots Ganz, he yells to Kehoe that he knows now that he never ran Burroughs’ photo through NCIC like he asked him to and also had Cruise hide the gun Brock used against him in their shootout (Kehoe had Burroughs try to hire Brock for insurance in case Ganz and Hickok failed to kill Reggie). Kehoe replies that he did those things because he was getting close to the truth and he needed leverage on him. Suddenly, we see that Ganz is still alive, and he aims his gun at Reggie, but discovers that he is out of bullets. After Reggie finds out that his handgun is empty as well, the two have a very short brawl that ends with Reggie punching Ganz and sending him out of a nearby window, where he crash-lands on a truck full of water cooler jugs far below and dies.

Seconds later, Kehoe takes Reggie hostage and confronts Jack, and he tells Jack just to let him walk out of here. Jack replies by calling him a disgrace to law enforcement, and Reggie – infuriated over how the last couple of days have been going for him and how he doesn’t have his Porsche or his money anymore – tells Kehoe to save his ammo and just let Jack shoot him, then yells for Jack to go ahead and do it. Jack surprisingly fires a bullet into the right side of his chest, and after the shocked Kehoe lets the equally-shocked Reggie fall to the floor, Jack guns down Kehoe.

Police officers and paramedics are called in, and as Reggie is about to be loaded into an ambulance, he tells Jack that he can’t believe that he shot him, but Jack tells him that he did real good in that club and that the doctor said that he will be just fine. Reggie then tells him that he is sorry that he had to kill Kehoe because he was his friend, but Jack replies that HE is his friend and he had to save him. He then shows Reggie that he has the bag containing the $500,000 that Cruise brought and tells him that he will meet him at the hospital to talk more about it. As Reggie is put into the ambulance and driven away, Jack has Amy hold onto the bag while he goes to smoke a cigarette, but he discovers that his lighter is missing. He realizes that Reggie picked his pocket for it while they were talking, and he smiles at this.