Delirious: ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’ Movie Review
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is another one of Eddie Murphy’s streaming projects to come out in recent years. After the success of Dolemite is My Name for Netflix in 2019 his theatrical drawing power has clearly translated to the Silicon Valley-smaller screen. Murphy’s latest addition to Netflix is a soft reboot for the Beverly Hills Cop franchise. The film is a fun and nostalgic action movie that offers a competent performance from Murphy and a vapid style that harkens back to the previous films in the franchise.
The narrative structure of the film is that of the archetypical cop film. Axel Foley, played by Eddie Murphy, returns to Beverly Hills when his daughter, attorney to a Cartel informant and played by Taylour Paige, is threatened. In protecting his family, he uncovers a conspiracy and has to work outside the law with his partner Detective Bobby Abbott, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Fans of the franchise will appreciate the return of franchise staples Chief John Taggert, played by John Ashton, and Judge Reinhold’s portrayal of Billy Rosewood. The film’s structure outside of its callbacks is nothing to write home about. It’s plot holds similarities to the other Jerry Bruckheimer offering out this summer Bad Boys: Ride Or Die in the conspiracy focused plot and pacing of the humor.
The strength of this film lies in the comedic talents of Eddie Murphy. His performance drives an otherwise rudderless film. The banter with his costars, particularly with the scenes at the hockey game in the first act shows that Eddie Murphy still has his charisma even in a film with lackluster writing in the comedic department. His bit about being the newest trade to the team had to have been Murphy’s writing because the comedy is downhill from there, excluding Murphy. Murphy is far from his best in this film but his performance is competent if slightly phoned in and clunky. He doesn’t commit to many of the bits in the film. He looks stiff in his body language. His performance mains the helm of the ship but it was already sinking before he could even try to save it.
The nostalgic soundtrack is a nice touch. It uses a lot of hits from the 80s in order to evoke the original series of films and the soundtracks they had. Songs like The Neutron Dance by The Pointer Sisters, Shakedown by Bob Seger, and Hot In The City by Billy Idol are all classics of the MTV Generation’s paunchy middle age retrospectives. The soundtrack also does something interesting with its use of the famous instrumental Axel F from the original movie. At first, the audience only hears the song in slow snippets and throughout the film it is revealed more and more. It’s a nice touch.
As for the other performances in the film, Taylour Paige and her portrayal of Axel Foley’s daughter shows some promise. The actress brought a sincerity to her defense attorney character that felt relatively genuine in the otherwise thin plot. The on screen presence of Taylour Paige balanced out the other notable supporting roles in her efforts. Kevin Bacon as Captain Cade Grant was one of the biggest weaknesses in the film. He just seems wooden. In his attempt at portraying a stoic master manipulator he loses any traits that make his character unique. Lately, Kevin Bacon has made a habit of these kinds of roles and in this film his performance borders on lazy. He does nothing interesting with vocal inflections, facial expressions, anything. It feels like he’s just going through the motions.
The direction of the film, courtesy of Mark Molloy who is making his feature film directorial debut with this film. The shooting style is a competent imitation of classical Hollywood styles with a few sequences, particularly the shootouts, that take influence from rail shooter style video games such as House Of The Dead in its chaotic nigh-first person tone. The color palette often emphasizes a lot of cool blues and some instances of some harsher greens indicates a playful style and shows off his graphic design background. The directorial style seemingly takes influence from John Wick not only in its color palette and video game inspired cinematography. Though the film misses most of its emotional beats and lacks clarity on the cartel sub plot with Taylor Paige’s character the directors style shows some level of freshness for the action genre.
Ultimately, the film Is a nostalgia baiting trip down memory lane written for the express purpose to be watched for the novelty of being another Beverly Hills Cop film. That, in an of itself is not a bad thing. Bad Boys did the same thing earlier this summer. Where Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F goes wrong is that it feels like a film that doesn’t justify it’s own existence. If this film existed outside of the vacuum of the previous installments than this film never would have seen the light of day. With all of that said, the film is fine. It’s nothing special. If when you saw the announcement that Netflix would be making another Beverly Hills Cop movie and you were hit by a wave of memories of going to your local movie house as a child and seeing the original then you will probably find this film enjoyable. If, however, you scroll endlessly on Netflix and find this on your feed and you aren’t already all in on this go ahead and keep scrolling.
