A new Beverly Hills Cop sequel could not elicit much excitement given the success of the current series. It might even induce a hazy fear. Happily, the fourth movie in the series is the best since the first one came out in 1984. That’s not to suggest it’s nearly as good as that movie, but by keeping things modest, it manages to be a lighthearted, humorous, and nostalgic two hours without coming across as too forced.
As is customary, it opens in Detroit, where Eddie Murphy’s character Detective Axel Foley is still up to no good, smashing up the city while hunting down relatively small-time offenders. He later travels to Beverly Hills again due to a narcotics case, where he runs across his former coworkers Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton), as well as his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige), a lawyer defending a man with ties to some extremely harmful individuals.
Everyone concerned did a good job of carrying out what the majority of fans probably want.
Without going overboard, first-time director Mark Molloy gives it the entire vibe of an 80s film. It’s evident in the synthy music and smoggy, sunset glow of Tony Scott, but it’s also in the way he embraces genre clichés with warmth and essentially disregards technological advancements over the last forty years. The majority of detective work is done without the use of computers in this setting, tracking devices are still massive, flashing devices, and all leads to suspects’ locations are the docks and/or a mansion with a large lobby where shootouts take place. The main case isn’t very mysterious—you could probably figure it just by looking over the cast list—but that simplicity really works to the movie’s advantage. It provides breathing room for the humour.
Murphy doesn’t seem to be attempting to emulate his former self, but he is also not the tornado of crazy comic energy that he once was. Rather than portraying the elder Foley as completely insane, he plays him as quirky and cunning. As essentially the straight lady who has little patience for her father’s foolishness, Paige finds the appropriate amount of indignant rage. Detective Abbott, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jane’s ex, appears to be only there to fill in story holes and offer explanation, but Gordon-Levitt is a refreshingly calm character who maintains his composure when Murphy gets intense.
Everyone involved has done a good job of bringing to life what most fans are probably hoping will be a very late Beverly Hills Cop sequel. There isn’t a contemporary blockbuster franchise that this action film can compete with in terms of slickness or inventiveness. It’s carefree and charmingly retro. It seems as though watching it would require opening a VHS case.
In this sequel that brings back some of the excitement of the first, Eddie Murphy is in top form as he has been in years.