Beverly Hills Cop – Axel F movie review: Eddie Murphy turns up the ...
Eddie Murphy in a still from Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. (Photo: Netflix)
The Beverly Hills Cop franchise appeared to die a natural death back in 1994, when the third film bombed in the eyes of critics, audiences, and star Eddie Murphy himself. But the dead don’t die in the era of re-quels, legacy-quels and side-quels, and in perhaps the most algorithmic sign of the times, we’ve been presented with a fourth instalment three decades later, not in theatres, but on Netflix. Titled Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the new movie finds Murphy’s titular troublemaker answering a call to home and confronting his past. As always, it’s the emotional undercurrent that grounds Axel’s increasingly outlandish escapades.
An approximation of ‘80s action-comedies but with an eye on contemporary anxieties, the new Beverly Hills Cop is an uneven experience that doesn’t make you want to hurl an Adidas shoe at your screen like some other recent Netflix movies might have, but also doesn’t leave much of an impression. It’s diverting, at best, but not entirely dismissible. Now living out in Detroit, Axel Foley receives a panicked call from his old buddy Billy Rosewood, played by a returning Judge Reinhold. Billy advises Axel to hightail it back to Hollywood because his daughter Jane, from whom he has been estranged for years, has become mixed up with the wrong people.
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Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, Taylour Paige as Jane Saunders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective Bobby Abbott, and Bronson Pinchot as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. (Photo: Netflix)
Played by Taylour Paige, Jane works as a criminal defence lawyer — something that Axel, being Axel, chalks down to her daddy issues. She’s defending the same folks that he’s putting away, he points out. Is this her way of getting back at him for essentially abandoning her? They get plenty of opportunities to dissect their damaged relationship over the course of the movie, as Will Beall’s standard-issue script forces them to join hands in uncovering a major corruption scandal involving a bent police captain played by franchise newcomer Kevin Bacon.
Axel and Jane are aided in their adventures by a young-ish new detective named Bobby, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. “Have you two had intercourse?” Axel asks tactlessly when he senses history between him and Jane. As it turns out, they have; they used to date. Perhaps a spill-over from an earlier draft of the screenplay, Bobby is mostly restricted to the sidelines, while Axel and Jane take centre-stage. She hates that he’s back in her life, but is forced to begrudgingly accept his assistance. She is, after all, in real danger. And there’s only so much that she can do without an actual police detective, even if the detective in question has let her down in ways that have forever traumatised her.
As it stands, Beverly Hills Cop 4 feels far too crammed. Axel and Jane’s arc is by far the most… arresting. It brings a certain maturity to a movie franchise that has always favoured silliness of serious drama. An excellent scene in which they’re driving around town together illustrates how effective this aspect of the movie really is. Axel tells Jane that he did what he did — leaving her behind to live with her mother in Los Angeles while he moved back to Detroit — was to protect her from all the enemies that he’d made over the years. “I was learning too,” he says, explaining that when Jane was five, he was five as well, but in ‘dad years’. At one point, he says that he went to therapy, but his ancient brain doesn’t allow him to let that lie sink in. “We both messed it up,” he says, and Jane shoots back through tears, “The parent is always the parent and the child is always the child. You messed it up. You’d know that if you’d actually gone to therapy.”
And as underwritten as he is, Bacon’s villain brings his own believable motivations. He was shot in the line of duty many years ago, but felt that the state didn’t do enough to rehabilitate him or honour his service. His entitlement and bitterness led him down a path of corruption. It’s an interesting idea, because the movie implies that most cops are similarly mistreated, which is what births the bad apples. You wonder, however, if anybody tuning in to watch the new Beverly Hills Cop would be prepared for a movie about parenting and policing, but there you have it.
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Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley and Taylour Paige as Jane Saunders in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. (Photo: Netflix)
The first Beverly Hills Cop film was famously developed as a brutal Sylvester Stallone vehicle. It was only after Murphy became attached that the project adopted a goofier tone; the movie pretty much popularised the action-comedy genre single-handedly. Murphy is prone to phoning it in from time to time, but it’s delightful to see him have fun again on-screen. A scene in which Axel and Jane pretend to be movie people as they extract information from a man who once played an extra in Jupiter Ascending is particularly inspired. “I’m Axel Foley, producer of the Liam Neeson revenge-thriller Impound,” he announces, as he engages the excited young man in conversation.
Directed by debutante Mark Malloy, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F doesn’t have the retro energy of the new Bad Boys films — the action scenes are imaginatively conceived, but poorly executed — but mercifully, it isn’t nearly as mechanical as some of the other assembly line products that Netflix releases in the name of action movies either.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Director – Mark Malloy Cast – Eddie Murphy, Taylour Paige, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Judge Reinhold, Kevin Bacon Rating – 3/5
