A movie like Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F shouldn’t be as good as it is. It’s not great. There are problems here and there. But for a franchise that was almost surely dead 30 years ago, the fourth entry could’ve easily been a dud.
It’s been in development Hell since the late 1990s and went through numerous stages at one time with Brett Ratner being the director in charge of bringing it to the screen. Then, he dropped out and Murphy was more interested in doing a spin-off TV series where his character Axel Foley has been promoted to Detroit Police Chief and the main focus would be on his son. But CBS passed on the series in 2013, at which time Murphy’s last movie was 2012’s disappointing A Thousand Words.
Murphy was wanting to make more edgier movies after being in family-oriented movies. But he would make the mediocre Mr. Church, which despite the movie’s best effort, feels more like a Hallmark TV movie. Finally, Murphy returned to the R-rated format as Rudy Ray Moore in the biopic Dolemite Was My Name. It was only the third movie he had made in the 2010s. A Thousand Words was filmed in 2008 and sat unreleased for nearly four years.
Covid-19 delayed the release of Coming 2 America which went directly to Amazon Prime in 2021 where it wasn’t near as good as the original. And the less said about the awful You People and the saccharine Candy Cane Lane the better. Murphy is now 63. He’s been needing a well-received movie for a long time. And considering the original directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah left the production in 2022 to go work on that unreleased Batgirl movie, the writing could’ve been on the wall that with Australian commercial director Mark Molloy making his feature debut, this could go bad.
Some insiders even predicted earlier this year that the movie would be another dud. Luckily, for Murphy and everyone involved, it all works. And the naysayers can eat a nice bowl of crow. Legacy sequels have become a recent trend with movies like Creed and Top Gun: Maverick showing that it can work if you provide a great story with good characters. The main problem with Coming 2 America was how boring the main story involving Akeem and his long-lost son was. And it’s probably because of that that the writers decided that Axel should have an estranged daughter, Jane Saunders (Taylour Paige), who’s revealed to have been born in the early 1990s between the events of the second and third movie.
Axel has only been given a love interest once and that was in the third movie but this movie hints to that without fully mentioning it. When the movie begins, Axel has his Detroit Lions letterman jacket on at a Red Wings game where he and another Det. Mike Woody (Kyle S. More) manage to stop a robbery. However, they commandeer a snow plow and create some damage through the streets of Motor City to arrest the culprits.
Since he was last seen in Beverly Hills Cops II, Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) has become deputy chief of police. And he’s falling on his own sword to save Axel’s butt one last time, announcing his retirement as he informs Axel all he’s got going for him is his job. He hasn’t spoken to Jane in almost five years for reasons unspecified. But it makes you wonder for Axel to remain on the force for over 40 years, how’s he not been forced into retirement? It’s possible after avenging the death of his supervisor in the third one, they let him stay on. But it’s more like Jeffrey has been covering for him and can’t do it anymore.
In southern California, Jane has gotten herself into a bind as she is representing a young client, Sam Enriquez (Damien Diaz), who suspected of killing a cop. Jane was swayed to represent Enriquez by Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), who resigned from the Beverly Hills Police Department and has been working as a private detective. It’s later revealed Billy retired because he and John Taggart (John Ashton), now chief of BHPD, got into an argument over corrupt cops involved and Billy tendered his resignation. Jane is threatened by masked men who tell her to stop representing Enriquez. Billy relays this information to Axel who leaves as soon as possible. But Billy is kidnapped while scoping out some possible criminal activity.
Once he gets to Beverly Hills, Axel finds himself getting into trouble when he finds some goons searching through Billy’s office. And as he tries to run away he steals a meter maid’s vehicle and finds himself arrested and questioned by a young detective, Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is later revealed to be an ex-boyfriend of Jane’s, For the most part I thought this was too cliched, but the casting of Gordon-Levitt and Paige is possible to appeal to younger audiences who may want to see more than a bunch of older guys running around.
Ashton is now 74 and still remains the hard-nosed by the book officer he was in the first two movies. Also on the force is Capt. Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), who is obviously the villain. Even Murphy has let this out in some of the interviews he did promoting the movie. I must admit the casting of Bacon, who is only a couple of years older than Murphy, is perfect. Both Bacon and Murphy became big names in the early 1980s but they took different career paths over the years. Bacon is one of those actors who seems to fluctuate well between playing the good guys and the bad guys. His character delivers a good line about the treatment of police in a city where a lot of them can’t afford to live in. It might also explain why Axel has remained in Detroit while not being swayed to work out on the coast.
The plot is generic as Axel and Jane reunite amid family drama to find out where Billy is and to discover what he was after as it will also help her case with Enriquez who is referred to more than he appears on screen. With help from Abbott they discover more about Grant and his involvement with drug cartels. The action sequences are very thrilling and well staged. But it’s really nice to see Murphy reprise the role with the same gusto he did years ago, even acknowledging that he’s getting too old for this shit.
It’s nice to see many of the original actors together. Bronson Pinchott pops up again during a scene as Serge who trades the same banter with Axel. We finally get a glimpse of Taggart’s wife, Maureen (Sarah Abrell). Taggart says they had separated but reconciled during his retirement, which is why he took the position as police chief. Ronny Cox’s Andrew Bogomil is MIA and so is Jenny Summers mainly because Lisa Eilbacher has retired from acting. It’s a lot getting all these characters together.
I will give the writers credit for avoiding the same cliches that other movies like this would’ve gone down. The moment you hear Jeffrey is going to retire, you suspect that he’s probably going to get murdered but that doesn’t happen. In previous failed stories, Billy is killed as Axel investigates the murder. Originally in the first movie, it was written that Billy would be killed off. But the filmmaker’s found Reinhold’s performance so likeable, they changed the script. I don’t want to give much away but the writers and Molloy must’ve seen all the backlash from the Star Wars sequel trilogy and decided it’s best not to make the fans angry.
Sadly, that is also the weakest link of the movie. Reiser and Pinchott just pop up on screen for a little bit. Reinhold is missing throughout the middle of the movie and Ashton seems the play the character like he did in the first movie. Part of the humor was letting Taggart cut loose in the second one as he and Billy each crack open a brew together at the Playboy Mansion or how he has to change his clothes into some gaudy golf-style clothing but things he looks sharp.
The Jane character seems like there was more to the script that got left out on the rewrites. Gordon-Levitt does have a background in comedy, most notably his role on the sitcom Third Rock From the Sun, and there’s a scene between him and Murphy that I won’t spoil that is kinda funny as they try to make their escape from the bad guys. As for Bacon, he might be the best choice for a villain in the franchise. Part of the movies’ problems is the weak villains. Jonathan Banks killed it as a henchman in the first movie but Steve Berkoff never seemed as menacing. In the second one, Brigette Nielsen took the villain role too seriously while Jurgen Prochnow wasn’t given enough screen time. And Timothy Carhart was the wrong person to play the villain in the third one while Stephen McHattie’s crooked Secret Service Agent seems to only exist so we know he’s the bad guy. John Saxon was also underused.
No, Bacon’s Grant shows just how a bright young police officer can turn crooked later in life as he tells Axel sometimes the rules have to be broken if they get the better outcomes. Axel himself was a former juvenile delinquent who went straight and became a cop. He doesn’t play by the rules either.
Of course, since this is streaming on Netflix, it falls into the same problem as other movies by being a bit too long. It’s the longest one at nearly two hours with credits. The previous movies clocked in at about one hour and 45 minutes. This movie definitely needed some tighter editing for the pace. But it’s still on tune with the feel of the first movie which despite only have two action sequences bookend the plot turn out to be a major blockbuster and made Murphy the star he still is.
There’s already plans to make a fifth movie. This movie movie made Jerry Bruckheimer a major player and he’s had another hit with Bad Boys: Ride or Die which is also in talks for a fifth movie. I wouldn’t put it past all those involved to make it a Beverly Hills Cop Meet Bad Boys crossover.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 