Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
Directed by: Mark Molloy
Premise: The fourth film in the Beverly Hills Cop series. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) returns to Beverly Hills when his estranged daughter (Taylour Paige) is threatened by a corruption scandal.
What Works: Fans of the Beverly Hills Cop series ought to find that Axel F reiterates much of what they enjoyed about the earlier pictures. Eddie Murphy slips back into the role—and the same Detroit Lions jacket—and the sequel brings back Judge Reinhold and John Ashton and Paul Reiser. Axel F also includes music cues from the earlier films and repeats a few of the gags. There are a few self-aware moments that are played for laughs without being obnoxious. The filmmakers allow Axel some growth. He’s been an absentee father to a grown daughter who is now a defense attorney. The tension between father and daughter is played well. She has a justified grudge against her father that takes time to repair. The filmmakers also acknowledge the contemporary regard for police. In a callback to a key moment in the original film, Axel and others have to acknowledge the way loyalty among law enforcement can become a shelter for corruption. It’s an effective way of bringing the series and the character into the present. The corruption story makes for an effective mystery. Axel F is part comedy and part police procedural and part action and it does all three aspects of its story well enough.
What Doesn’t: In bringing back all the familiar Beverly Hills Cop elements, Axel F plays as a retread of a lot of what we’ve already seen. The new film benefits from the passage of time. It’s been forty years since the original film and thirty years since the last one so Axel F may enjoy some goodwill on the part of viewers. But the callbacks of Axel F are frequently an end in themselves. The filmmakers don’t do much that is creative and it mostly just reminds us of previous Beverly Hills Cop movies. Alex F also relies on the same trope we’ve seen in so many retro reboots such as 2018’s Halloween, Rocky Balboa and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in which the aged hero is disillusioned and burdened by failure. That’s evident in Eddie Murphy’s performance. He lacks the mischievous energy of the earlier movies, which is understandable given the passage of time, but Murphy comes across disengaged with the material.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a satisfying enough nostalgia sequel. It revisits the material on the original picture’s fortieth anniversary in a way that plays like a victory lap but Axel F sticks to the familiar rather than doing much that is new.
Episode: #1005 (July 21, 2024)