Movie Review: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Netflix)

By John Corrado

Eddie Murphy returns to one of his most iconic characters in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. The Netflix-backed legacy sequel finds the comic actor reprising his role as Axel Foley, the Detroit cop with his own way of doing things who ends up transplanted to Beverly Hills.

Arriving forty years after the 1984 first Beverly Hills Cop (and thirty years after the third one from 1994), this fourth entry has been in some form of development for years, and it predictably checks all the boxes as a legacy sequel.

The Jerry Bruckheimer-produced action comedy is closely modelled after the ’84 original and its 1987 sequel Beverly Hills Cop II (which had the distinction of essentially being a Tony Scott-directed action flick).

Sure, this fourth movie has the air of being a nostalgia-bait reunion at times, but Axel F is still an entertaining streaming diversion that is probably better than it could have been. The plot finds Axel Foley (Murphy) returning to Beverly Hills to help his estranged daughter Jane Saunders (Taylour Paige) crack a case, and investigate the disappearance of now-former cop Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold).

Jane is a lawyer representing a local gang member accused of killing a cop, pulling them into a criminal underworld that involves a potential coverup. The case reunites Axel with Rosewood’s old partner John Taggart (John Ashton), now the police chief, and also forces him to work with Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young detective who has a romantic history with Axel’s daughter.

The film serves as the feature directorial debut of Mark Molloy, whose background is mainly in directing TV commercials. While Molloy is a first time film director, the whole production has a slick, polished quality to it that does make one question why it is being dropped directly on Netflix without being given a theatrical run first (especially given the success of the recent Bad Boys legacy sequels).

The father-daughter subplot does feel somewhat shoehorned in, and never has the full emotional payoff that it strives for (the timeline also seems to suggest that Jane would have been born a couple of years before the events of Beverly Hills Cop III). The film also runs long at nearly two hours, and takes a little while to get going. But once the film finds its rhythm, it turns into a breezy action comedy that captures just enough of what made the original films work.

It’s safe to say that Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F banks heavily on nostalgia for the first film in particular, right down to the music cues; “The Heat is On” plays over the opening sequence, and “Neutron Dance” comes on the soundtrack over a rambling chase. Composer Lorne Balfe builds on Harold Faltermeyer’s classic “Axel F” theme, which is also baked into Lil Nas X’s end credits song “Here We Go!”

None of this is particularly new, and Axel F is built mainly around throwbacks to the original from forty years ago. The screenplay, credited to Will Beal (Bad Boys: Ride or Die) as well as Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), hues closely to the formula of the first picture, which itself helped lay the groundwork for action comedies that followed. This fourth go-around aims to recapture a similar mix of comic banter and action set-pieces, complete with multi-vehicle pileups.

But there is nostalgic appeal to seeing Ashton and Reinhold, now clearly a few decades older, reprising their roles as the tag team of Rosewood and Taggart. Additionally, the film features appearances from Paul Reiser as Axel’s former partner Jeffrey Friedman, and Bronson Pinchot as Serge, who stole the show in the first movie. Kevin Bacon also joins the cast as hot shot police captain Cade Grant, and his presence adds to the ‘80s nostalgia of it all.

Murphy is clearly still tuned in to this role, reprising one of his most famous characters from the peak of his move stardom. Some of the best moments are when he teams up with Gordon-Levitt’s detective, with the two having solid buddy cop chemistry together. As a made-for-streaming legacy sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is enjoyable enough to pass the time, and if it doesn’t reach the heights of those first two instalments, it’s still fun to see Eddie Murphy back in this role.

Film Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)