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Beverly Hills Cop Axel F… or, I could call it Beverly Hills Cop 4: Axel F… with the 4 in, because it’s the 4th film. What does “Axel F” tell us, other than remind us of Harold Faltermeyer’s tune from 40 years ago? Or that awful Crazy Frog dirge.
Talking of the former, how come Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is still a cop, when he’d long since be retired at 63? Maybe they should’ve made this 15 years ago. Might just about have made sense.
Additionally, as with Bad Boys 4: Ride Or Die, and Top Gun Maverick, the production company is attributed to both Jerry Bruckheimer and the late Don Simpson, as JB does from time to time for their long-running franchises.
However, as he arrives in town, you’d think they’d show sunny hot spots while Foley cruises by hot girls in hot pants, but no… it’s the depth of winter, and he’s slowly driving down dismal backstreets. May as well be Manchester!
Plus, he’s only been there five minutes when he starts trying to make everything about his race and colour. Come on, that’s CNN’s job(!)
He’s sat in an ice hockey game with cop colleague Mike – acting as if they’re best friends, even though this is the only time we’ll see this character – because he understands the place is about to get robbed. Bullets fly, yet no-one is hit, but this is just an intro to bring Axel back into the game, even though the ‘speed’ of his snowplough in the subsequent scene is about as fast as a mobility scooter.
Paul Reiser (Whiplash) is now the Deputy Chief, but he’s about to retire, and not before time, given that the actor is 68. Meanwhile, for other regulars returning, Judge Reinhold is 67, and John Ashton (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension) is 76! However, while it’s nice to see these three, they’re barely in it! Still, when the first two are briefly together, it’s nice to see the chemistry… but it wasn’t worth waiting 30 years for – just rewatch the first two movies.
It’s obvious as to who’ll turn out to be a bad guy in this piece, but Axel’s estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige) is a lawyer who’s rather pressured into dropping a case with a criminal called Enriquez who killed a cop, but when it comes to the details of that case, I failed to care… as did the scriptwriters, as we never learn what happens to him by the end.
Meanwhile Kevin Bacon plays Kevin Bacon, as Captain Cade Grant, who used to be a cop, but now runs the narcotics task force, but like Becon, even Murphy confirms he can’t be bothered with this any more. In addition to not bothering with the trademark laugh, around halfway through, he starts to apply his usual stock-in-trade to fake an identity with a silly accent in a hotel, in order to get a free room… and then changes tack, “To hell with this, I can’t do this any more“, and then uses his own voice.
I guess if you just pretend it’s still the ’80s, you might get something out of this, as it throws familiar hits like The Pointer Sisters’ Neutron Dance, and Bob Seger’s Shakedown, but too much of this is a stretch in the modern era. Despite being over 60, Axel still lives in a shithole of a flat, and in another scene, someone high up can’t just suspend a cop below them without making them aware of their Union rights etc.
For an attempt at modern music, we get a remix of Billy Idol’s Hot in the City, with some female rapper yabbering over the top of it. She needs to be shutdown like Jar Jar Binks should’ve been in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. No-one would’ve missed her.
There’s a handful of decent scenes, such as the one between Foley and Grant in the police station, and another with Foley and cop Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt – The Walk 3D) in a helicopter, during which, they CGI crash onto a golf course, although the script fails to have anyone shout “Fore!” Come on – that was an easy one to throw in!
However, someone behind the scenes is clearly taking the proverbial, when at one point, Axel commandeers a female traffic cop’s buggy, yet while she’s black, the actor playing the stuntman (when seen from afar) is clearly a bulky, white male! WTF?!
Oh, and when “motherfucker” comes up in the film just five minutes in, the word is part-muffled for the f-word part. Why?! Is this the ITV version? I’d love to know the answer to that.
In the meantime, forget Beverly Hills Cop Axel F, as no-one involved with making this film gives a damn, and just watch the first two films again. How the hell it cost $150m to make with such piss-poor CGI at any point, such as that helicopter crash, shows someone’s trousering the cash, rather than putting it on the screen!
Note: There is no mid- or post-credits scene in this film.
Beverly Hills Cop Axel F is on Netflix now, but is not yet available to pre-order on any format. However, you can buy the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy on 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 117 minutes
Release date: July 3rd 2024
Studio: Netflix
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Rating: 2/10
Director: Mark Molloy
Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Eddie Murphy, Chad Oman
Screenplay: Will Beall, Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten
Music: Lorne Balfe
Cast:
Axel Foley: Eddie Murphy
Jane Saunders: Taylour Paige
Detective Bobby Abbott: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Billy Rosewood: Judge Reinhold
Chief John Taggart: John Ashton
Deputy Chief Jeffrey Friedman: Paul Reiser
Serge: Bronson Pinchot
Captain Cade Grant: Kevin Bacon
Lang: Brandon Butler
Det. Mike Woody: Kyle S More
Junior Bollinger: Kenneth Nance Jr
Captain Radtke: Keith Pillow
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.