Synopsis
Detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is back on the beat in Beverly Hills. After his daughter’s life is threatened, she (Taylour Paige) and Foley team up with a new partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and old pals Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) to turn up the heat and uncover a conspiracy.
Review
It’s great to see Axel, Billy and John back for a fourth instalment in the Beverly Hills Cop series, this instalment comes 30 years after Foley’s rather terrible outing at Wonder World 30 years ago in Beverly Hills Cop III.
Director Mark Molloy takes over from John Landis who helmed the aforementioned third entry and Tony Scott who directed the first two instalments in the series on this fourth entry, making his directorial debut on this project that’s been in the works for nearly two decades before Netflix finally stepped in and brought the movie to its streaming service.
Yes, Murphy lacks the scene-stealing comedic charm he oozed earlier on in his career, in all honesty he’s a shadow of the performer we saw particularly in Scott’s first two Beverly Hills Cop movies films; but there’s still a glimmer of the old Axel we know and love here as we find him once again returning to Beverly Hills, this time to save his estranged Daughter Jane, a lawyer who’s found herself the target of the Cartel and corrupt cops as she attempts to clear the name of an officer wrongfully accused of murder.
Of course, the film leans heavily into all the standard legacy sequel tropes and cliches we’ve come to expect, with plenty of nods, callbacks and cameos by familiar faces including Paul Reiser and Bronson Pinchot, who reprises his role as Serge from the first film.
New cast members like Taylour Paige (who was great in Zola) who play’s Axel’s estranged daughter Jane, Joseph Gordon Levitt as detective Bobby Abbott her former boyfriend, don’t put a foot wrong but aren’t really given that much to do and Kevin Bacon is on standard rent a villain mode here, with all the sneary-sneariness we’ve come to expect from the actor in these kinds of roles.
But for all its nostalgia for previous entries, the film does feature some pretty great solid action sequences and enough over the top shootouts to make the late great Tony Scott proud. Early on Axel lays waste to much of Detroit in his pursuit of a gang of thieves following a robbery at an ice hockey game and later on there’s also a pretty tense shootout in Beverly Hills as Axel and Jane come under attack from the Cartel.
These sequences work best when they’re done as practically as possible, sadly a helicopter chase near the film’s finale feels a bit over-cooked even by Scott’s standards, it just too CGI heavy, clunky and silly: this from a series that featured a chase scene involving a cement truck in Beverely Hills Cop II.
Whilst it’s great to see the old cast back together and I’m sure seeing Foley, Rosewood and Taggart back on screen after all these years will put a smile on many fans faces, but they don’t actually get a lot of screen-time together, of the three its Judge Reinhold’s Billy who suffers the most, the former detective turned P.I. doesn’t really get that much to do as Billy, other than get Axel back to Beverly Hills his character doesn’t do that much and he quickly becomes nothing more than a plot device when he’s kidnapped early within the film.
Lastly but not least Lorne Balfe does a great job with the score, it’s filled with plenty of juke box classics from the 80s, many that featured on the original back in 1984, but once again the composer shows he’s not afraid to have fun with a big theme like Harold Faltermeyer ‘s Axel F.
Verdict
Molloy delivers a sold, if unremarkable return for Axel in this fourth entry within the Beverly Hills Cop franchise and probably won’t be the last. At least this legacy-sequel is a much more enjoyable experience than Murphy’s last attempt to return to a beloved role with Coming 2 America.
