{"id":23507,"date":"2024-07-02T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=23507"},"modified":"2024-07-02T18:43:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T01:43:37","slug":"review-beverly-hills-cop-axel-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-beverly-hills-cop-axel-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s important to acknowledge the role that expectation plays in this line of work, so let\u2019s begin by admitting that the notion of a fourth Beverly Hills Cop<\/em> movie, made for Netflix, thirty years after the (less than stellar) previous installment, filled this viewer with something less than feverish anticipation. Murphy has been threatening a fourth installment for years, usually in one of the lulls that has plagued his career since BHC3 <\/em>in 1994; the franchise was even floated as a television series back in 2013, shooting a pilot that CBS (CBS!) turned down. Going back to the well this late in the game, a full four decades after the release of Martin Brest\u2019s original film, smelled like abject desperation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started to settle in during the opening credit sequence, in which Murphy\u2019s Detroit police detective, Axel Foley, drives around the streets of Motor City to the strains of Glenn Frey\u2019s \u201cThe Heat Is On,\u201d aping the opening of the original film; by the time he was navigating a smash-\u2018em-up car chase with the accompaniment of the Beverly Hills Cop II<\/em> hit single \u201cShakedown,\u201d I was all in. As an \u201880s kid, I was clearly being pandered to. I was aware of it, and fine with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a feature film can\u2019t propel itself purely on nostalgia (just look at those new Scream <\/em>movies), and thankfully, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F<\/em> has more on its mind than cosplay. The story: Foley\u2019s estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) lives and works in Beverly Hills as a criminal defense lawyer. Her current client is accused of killing an undercover cop; he says, and she believes, that he was framed to cover for dirty cops in the BHPD. When her life is threatened, Foley heads out west to help his daughter, and call upon some old pals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foley-heads (is that a thing?) will be relieved to hear that not only is Judge Reinhold back as Detective Billy Rosewood, but John Ashton and Paul Reiser, who (perhaps wisely) sat out part three, also return. But the primary character of note here is Paige\u2019s Jane, who has much of her father\u2019s doggedness and stubbornness\u2014the latter particularly with regards to maintaining the distance between them. Their icy tension (over their fallout, over her profession) is played with real weight. But as they end up investigating this case together, and have to break through that wall, riffing and improvising off each other in tight situations, it\u2019s fresh and funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s partly due to Page, who continues to display the wit and charisma that made her so fun to watch in Zola, Jean of the Joneses, <\/em>and Ma Rainy\u2019s Black Bottom<\/em>. But it ultimately rests on Murphy, and he\u2019s wonderful.  The last thing you might expect from a third Beverly Hills Cop<\/em> sequel is a real, honest-to-God performance<\/em> from Murphy; it seems safe to assume he\u2019d just sleep-walk and horse-laugh through it. That\u2019s not the case\u2014 he gives the character age, gravitas, and grace, making Foley more than a mere comic construction, but a human being with lived experience. It\u2019s the best work he\u2019s done since Dreamgirls<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screenwriters Will Beall, Tom Gormican, and Kevin Etten have to thread a difficult needle, balancing  the original pictures\u2019 ethos of the cheerfully rule-breaking cop against the current ACAB environment. The dirty cop angle is an unsurprising but effective solution, particularly when said dirty cops are led by Kevin Bacon (another nice little tip to the series\u2019 80s roots), whose aw-shucks demeanor gives way to murderous grievance-airing. \u201cIn the current climate,\u201d he complains, \u201cyou have to be so careful about everything you say, everything you do\u2026\u201d The department is so crooked that Reinhold\u2019s Rosewood has resigned over a botched investigation and become a private investigator; Ashton\u2019s Taggart is now the chief of police, and his grizzled and great performance nicely conveys how old-school romanticism over the honor of the job can smoothly comport with a culture of corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to suggest that the picture is too <\/em>socially conscious (don\u2019t worry, anti-wokers!). It\u2019s primarily a delivery system for thrills and laughs\u2014and callbacks, including the now de rigueur<\/em> \u201cBeverly Hills arrival\u201d montage (with our hero gawking at freaks and hotties from his rinky-dink ride), chases in unexpected vehicles (including one to the Pointer Sisters\u2019 \u201cNeutron Dance\u201d), and even a knowing acknowledgment of Beverly Hills Cop III<\/em>\u2019s suckiness (looking through his police file and running down his previous visits, Joseph Gordon Levitt\u2019s younger cop notes, \u201cAnd then \u201994, not<\/em> your finest hour\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Above all, Axel F<\/em> has scale\u2014<\/em>it\u2019s not some rinky-dink TV thing, which is why Netflix\u2019s decision to not even give it the week-or-two-in-a-few-theaters-first treatment is so galling. This is a movie that should be seen on a big screen, with a big crowd of hooting and hollering lunkheads. Australian director Mark Malloy, a commercial director (shades of BHC II<\/em>\u2019s Tony Scott) making his feature debut, executes the action beats with genuine old-school, ground-level, practical flair, smoothly integrating the laugh lines and finding new ways to make cars smashing into each other into fun. (My favorite: the moment Axel figures out how to get some backup.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are things to complain about, sure. Bronson Pinchot\u2019s entrance is immaculately prepared, but his is ultimately a one-joke character on its third telling (Luis Guzman fares much better doing what Pinchot did in the original: popping in for one scene and absolutely taking over the movie). And while yes, I laughed when Foley is asked, of Levitt, \u201cHave you taken him to a strip club yet?\u201d, the script is loaded down with a few too many cutesy sequel wink lines; by the closing shoot-out, we shouldn\u2019t still have characters saying things like \u201cGoddamn Foley, here we go again\u201d and \u201cJesus Christ, some things never change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But look, I cannot even begin to feign subjectivity here. Beverly Hills Cop<\/em> was one of the first two tapes my dad bought after purchasing our first VCR, and I watched it far more times than an eleven-year-old should. If you love this series, Axel F<\/em> will hit all your pleasure points. It does everything you want a Beverly Hills Cop <\/em>movie to do; what makes it special is that it does a couple of older, wiser things besides. In a pair of early scenes with Reiser\u2019s Jeffrey (and yes, that little worm absolutely<\/em> would\u2019ve ascended to deputy chief), things get unexpectedly heavy, with Foley (and, it is not a stretch to presume, Murphy) weighing his own necessity and mortality. \u201cI know you think you\u2019ve got all the time in the world, Axel,\u201d Jeffrey tells him. \u201cBut you don\u2019t.\u201d These fine actors pull those scenes off, lending a sense of weight and purpose to what follows, turning Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F <\/em>from what we might fear (another Coming 2 America<\/em>) into what we never expected: a legacy-quel that\u2019s as good as the original. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A-<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” streams on Netflix<\/a> and opens in limited release on Wednesday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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