Arriving a full three decades after the last entry in the series, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a much better film than it probably should be and easily the best film in the series since Martin Brest’s 1984 original. Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) was mired in director Tony Scott’s visual glam and lack of interest in comedy, while Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) was downright anemic, despite director John Landis having successfully worked with star Eddie Murphy on Trading Places (1983) and Coming to America (1988). That lackluster third entry is given a wink-wink chiding in the new film when a character runs down Detroit cop Axel Foley’s previous incursions into Beverly Hills, with “’94” being described as “not your finest hour.”

It is no wonder, then, that Murphy has been reluctant to return to what is arguably his most well-known and popular screen character, especially since he was loathe to do it all the way back in 1994. It would seem that his returning to the franchise that helped define his initial stardom in the mid-1980s is little more than a desperate stab at reclaiming past glories, and there are times when Axel F feels like it is leaning a bit too heavily on easy nostalgia, especially when the soundtrack is pumping Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” or Bob Seger’s “Shakedown.” At the same time, though, when they start playing contemporary hip-hop, it somehow doesn’t feel right. Harold Faltermeyer’s iconic synth score is the soundtrack of Axel Foley’s existence, so when it comes on you can’t help but feel like the pieces are all in place.

Axel F finds the titular character back in Detroit still working the streets and trying to put away bad guys, which he does in the film’s opening sequence that improbably involves a hockey game and one of the series’ signature crash-and-smash chases through the city streets. We are quickly reunited with a host of previous characters, including Detroit deputy police chief Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser), whose surprise retirement reminds us that Foley has been on the street for a long time. So long, in fact, that since Beverly Hills Cop III he has had a daughter (Taylour Paige) and become estranged from that daughter, who has grown up, changed her name to Jane Saunders, gone to law school, and become a successful defense attorney working in Beverly Hills.

It is Jane’s defense work that draws Axel back to the 90210 when her life is threatened by a gaggle of dirty cops who risk being exposed if she successfully defends her client, who is accused of killing one of them. As always, Axel is a fish out of water, even more so because Jane doesn’t want him there, something she tries to make clear time and time again. But, Axel Foley isn’t one to take a hint, although his recalcitrance in this instance is driven less by the brash ego that drove his character in the earlier films and more by his desire to reconnect with his daughter and finally be the father he earlier failed to be. If that sounds a bit mushy for a Beverly Hills Cop movie, it is, but it works anyway primarily because Murphy and Paige have real chemistry. Unlike Beverly Hills Cop III, where Murphy tried and failed to play Axel as a more mature character, here he finds the balance between Axel’s attitude and his age, which is perhaps best embodied in the amusing scene where he starts to go into one of his signature loud con jobs to score a room at a ritzy Beverly Hills hotel, but gives up after only a few seconds because he’s too tired.

He still manages to get into all kinds of trouble, much of which involves Jane and Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a Beverly Hills police detective who is assigned to Axel’s case and also happens to be Jane’s ex-boyfriend. Axel’s primary nemesis is Captain Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), the clearly corrupt ringleader of the dirty cops whose snide condescension just begs for comeuppance. Much of the plot is set in motion by detective work being done by Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), the former Beverly Hills detective who now runs his own agency. The film also manages to drag John Taggert (John Ashton) back into the action, even though his absence in the third entry was explained by his having retired, as well as Serge (Bronson Pinchot), the flamboyant, mush-accented assistant who now helps Axel get into a multi-million-dollar house being repped by an agent played by SNL alum Nasim Pedrad, whose barely disguised self-loathing is one of the film’s funniest conceits.

Mark Molloy, a commercial director making his feature film debut, knows to mostly stay out of the way and let the nostalgia rule. He has a better sense than Tony Scott did of how to balance action and comedy, and he puts together some genuinely good sequences (including one involving a helicopter) and some really funny bits (my favorite was Axel trying to escape bad guys in a meter maid’s cart with the meter maid relentlessly pursuing him like a Terminator). Murphy slides back into the character like a well-worn glove, although the added dimensions he brings to Axel through age and experience give the film the distinction it needed to justify its existence. Axel Foley will always be Axel Foley, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be a little wiser and a little less selfish.

Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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