Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

 

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“Beverly Hills Cop” is another 1984 classic, which, to my pleasant surprise, actually made it onto the List. This is a movie I watched countless time in my childhood, but I believe it must have been a few decades since last time I watched it. It is still fun to watch, but I remember it as being much better than how I found it now. To me, it has not aged well.

In Detroit, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is an undercover police officer who is known for his controversial stunts that sometimes backfires. One evening he finds an old friend of his, Mikey Tandino (James Russo), in his apartment. Mikey clearly has something he wants to share with Axel, but never gets to fully explain before he gets shot and Axel knocked out by unknown gunmen.

Axel Foley is told in no uncertain terms to stay out of this case, so he takes “vacation” and follow Michaels trail to Beverly Hills. This is right here the basis for much of the comedy in “Beverly Hills Cop”, the bummed out, black policeman in uber posh Beverly Hills. Anybody familiar with Eddie Murphy will know this is a situation he can get a lot out of (a good example is “Trading Places”).

Axel quickly manages to get arrested by the local police who do not wish to have this potential disaster in their precinct. Detective William Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) are to babysit him until he leaves town, but Axel manages to get them on his side to find Mikeys murderer. The murder is, of course, only the tip of an iceberg of much bigger crime...

As a crime story, “Beverly Hills Cop” is one big cliché. Everything from the villain to Axel’s angry boss through the investigation, which is a combo unlawful entry and sheer provocation, is something we have seen both before and after in many versions. Be it a private eye or an actual police detective, the story is almost as old as the film media. Let us just say that it is not the excitement of solving the criminal case that keeps us awake watching this movie.

The reason we, or at least I, still enjoy watching this movie has a name and is called Eddie Murphy. It is strange to learn that “Beverly Hills Cop” was not actually written for Murphy, but actually intended for Sylvester Stallone. It was only when the action his version would involve got too expensive for the studio that they turned to Eddie Murphy and rewrote it to fit him. When you watch “Beverly Hills Cop”, it screams vehicle to high heaven. Every scene Eddie Murphy is in, and that is somewhere above 90%, he totally steals the picture. Reinhold and Ashton, good actors in their own right, are reduced to stooges for Murphy’s hijinks. Fortunately, Eddie Murphy is good and many of his stunts are funny. He is maybe a bit unbelievable as a cop, but, hey, this is the eighties, social realism got left behind in the previous decade.

Three or four decades ago, “Beverly Hills Cop” gave me hysterical laughing fits. Watching it now, they are reduced to a chuckle and that I found disappointing. The gags are simply not that funny anymore and without the fun, the rest of the movie looks poor and barely sticking together.

The soundtrack is still good though. Faltermeyer’s Axel F theme is one of those classic scores you never forget and in a strange coincidence, “The Heat is Up” was selected last Friday at the company Christmas lunch as the theme song of the Energy Systems department... This music still lives.

Recently, a new, fourth, Beverly Hills Cop instalment was released. I have not watched it yet and I worry. This was a franchise that took a steep downhill after the success of this first instalment.