The Taking of Beverly Hills is a 1991 action film, directed by Sidney J. Furie. An action film in the vein of Die Hard, the film stars Ken Wahl, fresh off the success of the TV series Wiseguy, as football hero Boomer Hayes, with Matt Frewer stepping up to the plate as his sidekick, Beverly Hills policeman Ed Kelvin. Despite Wahl's presence, and due to rather lackluster advertising, the film bombed at the box-office on its initial release, finding an audience through cable TV and its video release.
Plot
Our setting is the city of Beverly Hills, California: home of the filthy rich and famous. If you're the common man in this town, as are the Beverly Hills policemen, you're underpaid, overworked, and understandably fed up with it. One night, a truck carrying hazardous materials crashes, releasing a deadly chemical. The citizens of Beverly Hills are sent to quarantine in a hotel in Century City, while the police and the EPA agents stay behind to keep an eye on the valuables and clean up the town.
However, the spill is a cleverly executed hoax masterminded by the head of L.A.'s football team, Robert 'Bat' Masterson. The police officers and DEA agents are bitter ex-cops eager for a piece of what the citizens have hoarded from them. WIthin the 70 minutes that it will take for the National Guard to arrive, they plot to loot every home and business in the city.
However, one man has been forgotten in the rush to get everyone out. Aging football player Boomer Hayes was in his hot tub, expecting to get lucky, when his lady friend, Laura Sage went to see what was going on and was taken in the rush to evacuate everyone. The officers thought that "Boomer" was her dog, but checked anyway. After taking care of one of the cops sent to kill him, Boomer is trapped in the hot tub by an officer, but before he can shoot him, he's shot from behind. Ed Kelvin, a cop in on the whole thing but disgusted by the ruthless murder of the Mayor (he was told there would be no killing), fills in Boomer on the whole situation, and Boomer decides to help bring in the real police, who are locked in the station's hazmat suit room. Donning his jersey, injecting cortizone for his bum knee, and enlisting Kelvin's help, Boomer will spend the next 70 minutes attempting to stop the robbery and bring Masterson to justice, while evading ex-cops and the hired thug Benitez, who has commandeered a SWAT tank and is gunning for Boomer and Kelvin.
Computer game
A computer game was released in 1991 to coincide with the film's theatrical release. The game was an action/adventure hybrid where you could play as both Boomer Hayes and Laura Sage (strangely, Ed was left out) to solve puzzles and defeat bad guys in order to stop the looting of the city.
However, the game was developed and released by Capstone Software, a company notorious for their poorly-created movie tie-ins. The game had some significant bugs and poor gameplay, and, like the film its based on, faded into obscurity. You can freely download the game from the internet as abandonware.
Critical response
All quotes are from Rotten Tomatoes:
- "The Taking of Beverly Hills is sound and Furie signifying nothing. Director Sydney J. Furie takes a promising premise -- the robbery of the world's most upscale community while residents are fleeing a fake toxic spill -- and reduces it to an assortment of car stunts. Cars screech, cars crash, cars flip, cars burn, and so on. Take that away and you have Ken "Wiseguy" Wahl. You'll miss the cars." - Richard Harrington, WASHINGTON POST
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