According to
Brion James, around 50 minutes were cut from the final work-print until the released version. James said in an interview, "[
Total Recall (1990)] came out a week before [this film] that summer, it made $25 million, became the #1 movie in the country, and the studio panicked because they had invested a lot in the '48 Hours' films, but they felt that at well over two hours, that the movie might be too much. My stuff was in there until one week before the film opened; that is when they cut 25 minutes out of that movie, a week before it opened. It went from around 140 to down around 95 minutes. They said, 'Cut all the behavior, action, comedy . . . '. I lost every major scene I had. That's the last time I ever cared about a movie because I went to the press screening and it was like getting kicked in the stomach, seeing what is not there. I was the third lead and now I looked like a dress extra. All the stuff that they had in the set-up, stuff in the trailer, all those scenes, were gone."