Eddie Murphy is the latest movie star from the 80's and 90's to revisit a popular character from his prime. He did so first with Coming 2 America (2021), a film that was meant to be released theatrically but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was pushed back a year. According to Amazon, it did amazingly well online, becoming one of Amazon's most successful streaming films. Coming to America (1988) is considered Murphy's funniest film and hadn't been revisited in over 30 years, so there was probably pent up anticipation for his 2021 comedy. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) is Murphy's highest-grossing box office from a non-animated film. That film already had two sequels, each one with diminishing returns. One was in 1987. The other was in 1994, which was the least well-received of all the entries and felt like it would be the third and the last entry in this series. However, Hollywood is on a kick of resurrecting or rebooting properties from the 80's and now 90's, that it only made sense that it would scrape from the bottom of the barrel and bring back this Murphy-led film.
Beverly Hills Cop was basically a buddy cop film, an action comedy. The same could be said about Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. That franchise was rebooted with Bad Boys for Life (2020), which saw nearly a two-decade gap between installments. That film gave Will Smith's character an adult son with whom he was estranged, mainly because Smith's character didn't realize he had a child. This 2024 film, directed by Mark Molloy in his feature debut, and co-written by Will Beall (Bad Boys: Ride or Die), does the same thing by giving Murphy's character an adult child with whom he's estranged. Instead of an adult son, Murphy's character has an adult daughter. Bad Boys for Life had the father-child relationship be more adversarial than here. The buddy cop aspect that was a key component of the original Beverly Hills Cop has been transferred to the father-child relationship here.
Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, a veteran police detective in Detroit. Axel has always been involved with undercover work, busting smugglers or drug traffickers, but he's also good at sniffing out all kinds of criminals, both petty criminals and more hardened ones. He's essentially a Sherlock Holmes but from the ghetto. His method of policing often requires him to be a conman, utilizing improvised comedy in order to trick people into doing what he wants or blending into places where a Black man normally wouldn't. The original 1984 film had numerous scenes where Axel basically had to do his conman thing, which had him fast-talking and riffing in order to manipulate situations to his advantage. Those scenes were always funny and energetic. This film has scenes to that nature. Unfortunately, Axel's conman scenes didn't feel as funny or as energetic. Here, it feels like a shtick that's getting tired, but the film seems to recognize that tired shtick.
Taylour Paige (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Zola) co-stars as Jane Saunders, the aforementioned, adult daughter. She's estranged from her father. She lives in Los Angeles and works as a lawyer there. She's the reason that Axel has to leave Detroit and come back to the titular town, which is essentially what Axel has to do in every one of these films. She hates her father because he abandoned her. We're led to believe that Axel divorced her mother and never tried to make contact with Jane for all her life. Of course, this estrangement is needed for the drama but here it feels very contrived because it seems antithetical to who Axel Foley has been in all the previous films.
In the 1984 film, Axel crossed the country in order to avenge a friend's death. In the 1987 film, Axel crossed the country again to help a friend who was nearly killed. It seems incongruous that Axel wouldn't cross the country again to be there for his daughter and allow his estrangement from her to continue for decades. That seems like something that Axel would never allow, and if it was something that he allowed, the film needed to provide a way better reason as to why. I didn't feel as though the film did. Based on how this film plays out, this estrangement was unnecessary.
As mentioned, this film recognizes Axel's shtick is getting tired. Axel isn't as good at being a conman or running game to try to trick people into doing what he wants or give information that wouldn't normally give him. His tactics seem outdated, mainly due to him not necessarily getting modern-day culture or what might be Millennial or Gen Z culture. This is where his daughter enters the picture. She does get modern-day culture and she's able to pick up the slack. She's able to do her father's shtick too and in some cases better than he can or at least better when it comes to certain people. Seeing Axel's daughter outdo him at his own game replaces the buddy cop shenanigans of the previous films.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper and Inception) also co-stars as Bobby Abbott, a police detective in Beverly Hills who gets partnered with Axel when Axel lands on the west coast and gets into trouble trying to solve a case connected to his daughter. It also happens to be that Bobby used to be Jane's boyfriend. Gordon-Levitt is a good actor, but his presence distracts from the fun that could have been had between Axel and Jane. Unfortunately, Jane is so hateful of Axel that the film never fully allows for that fun. Axel's adventure with Bobby is meant to recreate that buddy cop magic that we saw in the 1984 film with the young Judge Reinhold who was given a more interesting comedic character than Gordon-Levitt.
There could have been something to Bobby, but the film also has to juggle the stuff with Axel and his daughter that one of the balls ends up dropping. Either the film should have not given Axel a daughter or it should have let go of the Bobby character or not tried to make him more integral. Yet, given the title of the film, I suppose Bobby was needed because otherwise there wouldn't technically be a "Beverly Hills Cop" in this narrative, at least not one who is of the main characters.
Rated R for language, violence and brief drug use.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 58 mins.
Available on Netflix.
