Lamar Reviews - Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Airdate 7/26/2024)

In the 80’s three films made Eddie Murphy a movie star. 48 Hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. Most of the 80’s action stars had bulging biceps and really big guns. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. Eddie Murphy used his comedic edge, rapier wit, and over the top confidence to take the movie that was originally written to star Sylvester Stallone and make it a huge hit. Can you Invision Beverly Hills Cop with Stallone as the star? Stallone couldn’t either. He turned it down and went on to make Cobra instead. Which gave us the classic line, “you’re the disease, I’m the cure.”

After the disaster that was Beverly Hills Cop 3 Murphy has been very resistant to make number 4. He maintains that all the scripts for a fourth one had no evolution, there was nothing different.  "Then once they added the element where Axel was married and he's not with his wife anymore, and they have a child and he's estranged from his child, and he's still in this job and all of his contemporaries are leaving. "All he's got is his job, and he's got this horrible relationship, we had a movie.”

The movie starts 30 years after the third. Axel is in his 60s and is still a Detroit detective working for friend, Jeff, played by Paul Reiser. We are immediately given a huge action scene, that of course could never happen in real life, to the tune of Shakedown by Bob Seger. He gets a call from Billy Rosewood, played by returning Judge Reinhold, that his estranged daughter Jane, played by Taylour Paige is in trouble. She is a L.A. defense attorney trying to get a suspected cop killer out of jail. So, Axel heads to Beverly Hills where we see John Taggart, played by John Ashton, who is now the Chief. A couple of new characters are introduced, Captain Grant, played by a very thin Kevin Bacon, and Detective Bobby Abbot, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who happens to be Janes ex-boyfriend.

The movie is just shy of 2 hours, Rated R for language, violence and drug use.

I’m not sure this is such a “new” Beverly Hills Cop movie. They have taken every element of the first movie they could and placed it in this movie. So, I think this movie was made to wipe out the memory of the third movie.

The plot could not be any simpler. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys are easier to spot than an episode of Walker Texas Ranger. But that is not what the movie is about. It is about Eddie Murphy doing his thing, and he does. I do think if you know the other three movies you will appreciate this a little more. Not a bad way to spend 2 hours at home. As far as making a fifth one, now that would be a colossal mistake. This is way better than the third movie, don’t pull a “Captain Jack Sparrow” take this win and go home.

My Score: 4 Buds