Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
NETFLIXEddie Murphy is back after twenty years on from the underwhelming trilogy capping, John Landis directed, Beverly Hills Cop III and a failed television pilot to reprise his infamous role of Axel Foley in the good but never great nostalgia trip that is Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Murphy slips into this character with utter ease: constantly charismatic and charming with terrific screen presence. Often elevating the constant mundane narrative and plot beats with desperately needed injections of flair and verbal creativity. It’s only really Joseph Gordon Levitt that stands against him as an opposing player in terms of tone and sentiment playing the strait-laced cop. It adds an interesting and endearing texture ethically as well as emotionally in terms of the relationship to ex-flame Taylour Paige’s Jane Saunders, who is also coincidentally the daughter of Murphy’s Foley. What a small place Beverly Hills is…. Granted the dynamic and relationship in this ménage a tois offers substance it ultimately feels overly conventional and contrived as said dynamic can’t evolve from the inevitable destination it will eventually arrive.
Ultimately, however, this adds to a wider disappointment in that, after twenty years and placing itself in the guise of a legacy sequel, begs the question: what are audiences returning to see here? Aside from causing trouble running into old friends and patching his relationship with his daughter, nothing is big enough or vital enough to warrant this entry. That being said, Beverly Hills Cop has never been this vital cathartic morally inventive foray into the human psyche and for the most part, without sounding condescending, is a blasé hangout of which this undeniably succeeds. All that said, it is simply a two-hour walk down memory lane, which is never fun and sadly stagnant. It’s fun enough to see Judge Reinhold and John Ashton or even Bronson Pinchot – with the latter the clear comedic standout. John Ashton is surprisingly given a considerable amount of screen time and thus emotional conviction to double down on the faux notion of Foley being a dirty cop for the audience to believe it a possible vague reality. Reinhold, however, is a walking corpse. Not only is he rarely involved here but he is so disinteresting and dull in the role, the only time he seems upbeat is to remember he’s actually in this film after almost ten years of inactivity and before that terrible direct-to-DVD ventures.
Interestingly, this is the first Beverly Hills Cop that feels like Die Hard – in particular, Die Hard 4.0. Look a little closer, and the two almost overlap not only in character arcs, narrative but even set-pieces. John McClane has no reason to be fighting a fighter jet as much as Axel Foley shouldn’t be stealing an LAPD helicopter to crash it without a scratch. Funny enough, the comparison is not due to the outstanding Die Hard 4.0 screenplay but more so that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is just following conventional screenwriting standards without wanting to do anything remotely different. All that being said, has any Beverly Hills Cop ever pushed back against this notion or screenwriting boundaries? Nope. At least the likes of ludicrous set-pieces and iconography in a feature that barely has a plot to keep things together. Axel F just plays everything too easy and without risk and almost just to settle the ship but not bring it back to port or set out for an actual destination.
The first act and hockey rink opening are the most satisfying. It plays out like a cold opening/prologue with visual and audible idiosyncrasies to remind the audience that this is indeed a Beverly Hills Cop movie, starting in a humorous but gritty grimy atmosphere that finds Axel back in Detroit undercover, which feels quite close to the previous entries in tone and execution. Unfortunately, past that first fifteen or so minutes, this entire experience is blatantly chasing previous films in this series, in both tone and comedic endeavour. Gone is the Tony Scott or Martin Brest orchestrated action sequences or flair and replaced is a Netflix visual shine of UHD. The scene blocking and shootouts are horribly staged and feel stagnant with a blink-and-miss-it CGI approach to gun shots, wounds and blood, which would suggest at one stage this was being shot for a theatrical release to be edited depending on test results.
Beverley Hills Cop: Axel F is a fine and occasionally good endeavour that surprisingly wants to hold all its interests and personality in the past without much movement forward. It does show it has signs to move forward and evolve this character to the next level, however, after the deplorable third entry to just stabilise this beast and keep it on good terms is a point in which leaving it alone is perhaps the best interest of all involved.
