Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review (and series review)

When a huge star from the past reappears in one of his classic roles, it’s tough to get it right. If you’re too faithful to the original you get accused of being derivative, but if you try to be too original the fans get irate. This movie errs on the side of faithful, and yes — it’s frequently stale. Bringing back The Pointer Sisters and Harold Faltermeyer’s theme isn’t enough to make this feel like a necessary revisiting of this franchise. That said, it has a diverting enough plot enough to carry the interest for an undemanding evening on Netflix, and Eddie Murphy? He feels like an old friend you wish you saw more often.

Detroit detective Axel Foley (Murphy) is still a shit-disturber, but he’s a lot longer in the tooth and carrying a few regrets for being a bad father. He’s back in Los Angeles to look in on his estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Page from Zola), a defence attorney trying to prove one of her clients didn’t kill a cop. When Axel shows up his sweet, formerly BH cop buddy, Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), now a private investigator, has disappeared, and his grumpier BH cop buddy, John Taggart (John Ashton), is police chief.

I seem to recall Taggart retired from the force in a previous movie, but probably best not to lean too heavily on continuity in a franchise where the last entry was 30 years ago.

What Axel F does right is give Murphy enough time to do his bits — pretend to be various characters and bullshit people in order to facilitate his investigations — even if he’s not quite as smooth as he used to be. It also casts solidly in support. It’s good to see Paul Reiser returning to a supporting part. Page is fine as Axel’s daughter, though you have to wonder whether hiring a comedian in this role might’ve allowed for more sizzle in their relationship and more laughs in the movie. As Jane’s ex-boyfriend, Bobby Abbott, also a cop, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a little bland, while Kevin Bacon’s Grant is a corrupt police officer — that’s telegraphed from the start. As soon as you see him in that blue suit, you know he’s the bad guy.

The movie also brings comic relief Serge back, though Bronson Pinchot seems to have forgotten how to play him, struggling with the accent. Nasim Pedrad, Luis Guzmán, and Christopher McDonald help out in cameos.

But Axel F makes you miss the effortless professionalism of Martin Brest and Tony Scott, the directors of the first two movies in this franchise. Molloy comes from directing ads, which I suppose is a legit springboard to feature films — it worked for Ridley Scott, after all — but this guy has no idea how to shoot or edit action sequences. The rest of the movie doesn’t look bad, but it’s mostly inert as a thriller. Instead it leans on the nostalgia porn of its origins, and Murphy.

One of the things that’s changed since these movies were originally popular is the end of cop movies as a cultural force, and for good reason: the myth of police officers being especially heroic when they break the rules has died many deaths, most recently with George Floyd. The dirty cops here and the continuance of the Bad Boys franchise this summer — also a Jerry Bruckheimer production — may suggest otherwise, but trust me, it’s over. Having Billy Rosewood moan, “Oooh, you can never have too much firepower,” as he cradles a machine gun lands a lot differently than it did in 1984. There’s no escapism to be found in urban gun battles.

And when Axel’s daughter, Jane, eventually, inevitably, becomes a pawn in Grant’s effort to force Axel to turn over a missing MacGuffin, that’s when you know this machine has truly run out of ideas.

Eddie Murphy’s first starring role (without sharing the bill with a white dude, and you can’t count Judge Reinhold) coincided with the peak of his stardom, following on the heels of his Delirious stand-up video from the year before, classic turns in 48 Hours and Trading Places, and his Saturday Night Live launching pad.

This film introduced the world to Detroit cop Axel Foley, investigating the murder of an old friend in Beverly Hills while bearing witness to the rampant consumer culture going on in LA, as well as being black, and being from a working class background. Overlooking an ugly streak of homophobic humour and the baked-in idea that cops breaking the rules makes them better at their jobs, the film still delivers lot of warmth and laughs riding on Murphy’s incomparable, unhinged talent, and strong support from Judge Reinhold and John Ashton.

This was also director Martin Brest’s big break. He handles the tone well, giving Murphy plenty of room for his comedy bits as well as some legit jeopardy in the thriller notes, while also delivering on the action sequences — the stunt team on this movie deserves a lot of credit. Brest would also go on to make another classic, Midnight Run.

Something that people might not think about right now when watching BHC is that in 1984, it was still a novelty to hear people in a comedy use the f-word so flagrantly. Murphy had already established his use of language in his stand-up. It made him something of a folk hero.

That scene between Axel and Bronson Pinchot’s Serge in the art gallery is really something. — it’s still hilarious, and everyone else in the film is good: Lisa Eilbacher, Paul Reiser, Ronnie Cox, and Stephen Berkoff as the heavy. Watch out for Damon Wayans who gets a scene as the Banana Man. And Harold Faltermeyer’s electronic score is iconic.

Murphy gets a story credit here, but it’s clear that we’re in a Tony Scott movie: such an ’80s, and subsequently, ’90s, director. He loves the venetian blinds, the angled light, the giant fans, characters in silhouette, a golden light behind them.

He also loves the guns and the Ferrari 308, and using women as props, naked and otherwise. Much missed is Lisa Eilbacher, who played Axel’s good friend Jenny Summers in the first film.

Axel’s now undercover in Detroit. He gets a call from the Chief of the Beverly Hills Cops, Bogomil (Ronnie Cox, who actually smiles) who I guess is planning a fishing trip? That surprised me. I mean, I know they went through something in the last film, but I never would’ve guessed they’d become pals. The chief calls just long enough to say he might have to cancel the trip, but doesn’t say much else. It’s the kind of thing where you’re sure someone is gonna get hurt bad.

When that happens, Axel goes down to LA to investigate… and finds once again rule-following cops John Ashton and Judge Reinhold along with jewel thief Brigitte Neilsen, standing about eight feet tall with none-more-‘80s asymmetrical sunglasses, along with Jurgen Prochnow and Dean Stockwell. Nice to see Chris Rock and Gilbert Godfried in small roles.

This is a movie where all you need to do is watch the trailer — all of Murphy’s best bits are in there. “I’m goin’ deep deep DEEP undercover.” We get a lot of Murphy’s fast talking bull and impersonations, and that’s really the best stuff. The cop stuff is pretty lame. The whole movie could’ve worked better if it had been Axel undercover as Johnny Wishbone, St Croix Psychic Extraordinaire.

One of the weirdest takeaways from a movie like this from the late ’80s — where the excesses of drug use on set seems so evident — is the sound mix, especially the sound of gunshots. They’re like cannons. I can imagine the producer in the editing bay going, “Make the guns louder!”

Directed by Landis on the downswing of his career, and written by Die Hard writer Steven E de Souza, this is a disaster. Say what you will about Tony Scott’s slick-as-grease style, at least he had one. There’s not much going on here besides Landis’ signature director cameos (George Lucas, Barbet Schroeder, Peter Medak, John Singleton, Ray Harryhausen, and Joe Dante, amongst others). If the second movie sometimes felt like it was fuelled by people doing a lot of coke, this is the bitter morning after, where you can’t get the chemical taste out of the back of your throat.

The plot, such as it is, goes like this: Axel is working to shut down an illegal chop shop in Detroit the very night it gets shot up by a lot of bad men, which leads to his chief getting killed. Go figure, the killer is connected with a theme park in California, a very lightly fictionalized Disneyland called Wonder World. Naturally, Axel connects with his old buddy in the Beverly Hills bureau, Billy Rosewood. This is the one where Ashton’s cop is retired, and so is Ronnie Cox. Instead, Hector Elizondo plays another rule following cop, until rule-following is really inconvenient.

Murphy seems like he’s more of less going through the motions. Worse, the old Axel F theme has been remixed with a terrible 90s drum track. This is an awful looking movie. There’s an action scene where Axel rescues a couple kids at a malfunctioning theme park ride that’s as cheap-looking as mainstream Hollywood filmmaking gets.

There is one brief laugh, the return of Bronson Pinchot as Serge, who’s become a survivalist equipment salesperson, though it’s paired with a freaky ad for a massive machine gun that’s also a microwave oven, The Annihilator 2000. John Saxon is there as a bad guy, which is cool, along with Canadian tough guy Stephen McHattie, but none of this is worth the minutes of your life the movie will demand.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review (and series review)

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