Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

by Julian Spivey

Photo: Netflix

Director: Mark Molloy
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Taylour Paige & Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Rated: R (language, violence & brief drug use)
Runtime: 1 hour & 58 minutes 

When you first hear a sequel is going to be made for a movie that came out 40 years ago the first question that pops into your head is … why?

That was my feeling when I heard that the fourth “Beverly Hills Cop” movie was being made for Netflix.
But, as he did with 2021’s “Coming 2 America,”  Eddie Murphy has once again shown that his original movie characters are so lovable that you don’t mind spending time with them even though they’ve long since obtained their AARP cards.

Of all of Murphy’s characters he’s played multiple times (and there have been a lot), Detroit detective Axel Foley is probably his best received by moviegoers and critics alike (if we’re subtracting the animated Donkey from the “Shrek” series that is) so even though it’s been 40 years since we were first introduced to him and 30 years since we last saw him on film it made sense to bring the iconic cop back to the big screen, or I guess since it’s Netflix the smaller screen.

My only experience with the “Beverly Hills Cop” series before first-time director Mark Molloy’s “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” was the original 1984 film. I haven’t seen 1987’s “Beverly Hills Cop II,” and from what it sounds like, I have no reason to watch 1994’s “Beverly Hills Cop III.”  

‘Axel F’ isn’t trying to rewrite the book or do anything new or fancy. It knows we want to spend another couple of hours with Murphy’s detective solving a crime – that once again involves him going across the country from Detroit to Beverly Hills.

‘Axel F’ introduces two new characters: Axel’s estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) and her ex/Beverly Hills detective Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Still, it’s the reunion between Axel’s old Beverly Hills cop pals John Taggart (John Ashton), now promoted to Chief, and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), who has quit the force to become a private detective, that leaves the biggest impact on the audience – even if we may not have gotten as much interaction between the three as we might have liked.

‘Axel F’ sees Jane, a criminal defense attorney, who has run afoul of some bad cops during a case involving a client who has been set up to take the fall for the death of another cop.

Kevin Bacon plays the baddie of the film in bad cop Capt. Cade Grant, whom you know from the moment you see him on the screen, is going to be the movie’s villain. It would’ve been nice to keep that under wraps for a little while, at least, but 1) Bacon is so adept at playing villains maybe you go with it from the start and 2) Axel is above-average smart and good at his job and can see through Grant’s smile from the start (which would be in keeping with the history of Axel seeing things other cops don’t).

Bacon’s Grant can’t match the smarmy villainy of the first film’s Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff), who just had that typical ’80s action film villain of European descent vibe about him that worked so well.

The storyline is pretty average cop case stuff – the kind you’ve seen hundreds of times before from cop movies or TV procedurals – but Murphy doing his regular likable Murphy thing as Foley makes it an exciting, fun watch from start to finish.