BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F: 3 ½ STARS. “out of the ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ playbook.”
SYNOPSIS: Almost thirty years since his last Californian adventure, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), the street-smart police lieutenant from Detroit, Michigan, returns to Beverly Hills after threats are made on the life of his criminal defense lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige). With the help of a new recruit, Detective Sam Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and old friends John Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), his investigation uncovers a deadly conspiracy.
CAST: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon. Directed by Mark Molloy.
REVIEW: A better name for “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” would have been “Beverly Hills Cop: Déjà Vu.” It’s been decades since Axel Foley’s last visit Los Angeles, and not much has changed. This time around, Foley has a daughter, which adds a new dramatic dimension for Murphy to play off of, but most everything else, for better and for worse, is straight out of the “Beverly Hills Cop” playbook.
The resulting burst of nostalgia doesn’t offer anything new. It does provide enough crowd-pleasing laughs—mostly courtesy of Murphy’s wisecracking, charismatic presence—and, like “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” from earlier this summer, some kick ass, old school action, that recalls the good times of 1980s funny action flicks.
The fourth instalment, now streaming on Netflix, is marred by a dull (and obvious) villain and by sticking a little too close to the established franchise formula. But the combination of Murphy’s fast talk and Harold Faltermeyer’s synth score, of action and laughs, is comforting, like a newly discovered artefact returned from the 1980s to soothe our frazzled 2024 neurons.
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