| Beverly Hills Cop, one of the first megahits of the early 1980s and the movie that catapulted Eddie Murphy into the Hollywood stratosphere, is all about attitude. It has to be: Short in the narrative department, filled with caricatures, and largely lacking in any real surprises, all it has is attitude. Its blend of comedy and violence was trendsetting, but its engine was fueled by Murphy’s comic-book self-assurance and laid-back, bad-ass attitude. He never flinches, he never quits, and he’s always primed with a witty quip or a sure-fire comeback—he’s the comedian as supercop (or is he the supercop as comedian?). Murphy stars as Axel Foley, a fast-mouthed, rule-breaking Detroit police detective who travels to the exotic land of Beverly Hills, California, in order to find out who killed his best friend, Mikey Tandino (James Russo). Foley is street-smart and down to earth, meaning he is immediately out of place in the posh world of Gucci, five-star restaurants, and red Porsches. In comedic terms, Beverly Hills Cop is an extended fish-out-of-water joke, except that the real joke is how well the fish ends up functioning on land. Axel never fits in, but that doesn’t stop him from winning in the end (and raising hell along the way). After meeting with an old friend named Jenny (Lisa Eilbacher) with whom Mikey used to work at an art gallery, Axel teams up with two reluctant, straight-laced Beverly Hills detectives, Sgt. Taggart (John Ashton) and Det. Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold). Taggart and Rosewood are conceived of in terms of Laurel and Hardy as an old married couple, and their domestic bantering shtick works largely in counterpoint to Murphy’s more aggressive techniques. “I’ve noticed you've been drinking a lot of coffee,” Rosewood points out gently to his older partner while they’re on a stakeout, “and I think that’s why you’ve had so much trouble relaxing.” The plot, originally written by Danilo Bach (April Fool’s Day) and then re-written by Daniel Petrie, Jr. (The Big Easy, Toy Soldiers), involves a drug-smuggling operation by Jenny’s boss, an uber-wealthy Aryan art dealer with cold blue eyes named Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff, who memorably played the sneering Soviet villain a year later in Rambo: First Blood Part II). The plot mechanics are so uniformly simple (there are not even any attempts to thrown in red herrings or bad leads) that they cease to hold any interest, which opens the space even wider for Murphy to take over. Director Martin Brest, helming his second feature after the old-codger bank caper movie Going in Style (1979), was smart enough to understand the inherent weakness of the basic material he was working with and to allow Murphy to command the screen. For the most part, Murphy’s routine works, with his no-fear attitude and unrelenting confidence functioning as the ultimate parody of all pop-culture supercop clichés. Axel seems to exist in his own universe, which sometimes leads to scenes that don’t work all that well, such as one in which he gets a room at an expensive Beverly Hills hotel by causing a ruckus at the front desk. Not only is the scene terribly unimaginative (if all else fails, raise your voice), but it’s also quite unbelievable. In most other scenes, though, Murphy’s attitude and provocative improvisations carry the movie even when everything else around him fails. Since Beverly Hills Cop was a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production, it also carries with it the trademarks of that illustrious producer-duo’s pioneering Reagan-era combination of high-tech violence with an irreverent attitude and a high-caliber soundtrack pulsing with Top-40 material (the pinnacle of which is 1986’s Top Gun). The urge to include all of the above makes for some awkward narrative ruptures, as the movie opens with a ludicrous chase sequence involving an 18-wheeler smashing through parked cars for no narrative purpose other than to show an 18-wheeler smashing through parked cars (ditto with the climactic shoot-out, which ups the ante by throwing in a couple of submachine guns). All of this, of course, is scored to a long parade of memorable synthesized pop rock, particularly Glenn Fry’s catchy title track “The Heat is On.” Beverly Hills Cop’s bizarre production history is perhaps even more fun than the movie itself. It began its long gestation in the 1970s as a vehicle intended for Al Pacino or James Caan, then got the green light with Sylvester Stallone attached as star, and finally wound up on screen with then-recent Saturday Night Live alum Eddie Murphy, who already had two certified hits with 48 Hrs. (1982) and Trading Places (1983) under his belt. Despite the number and variety of actors who were considered for the part of Axel Foley over the years, the movie is inconceivable without Murphy, who supplies attitude in spades to kick-start what is essentially a rote police procedural.
Copyright © 2020 James Kendrick Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick All images copyright © Paramount Home Entertainment |
Overall Rating: (3)
James Kendrick offers, exclusively on Qnetwork, over 2,500 reviews on a wide range of films. All films have a star rating and you can search in a variety of ways for the type of movie you want. If you're just looking for a good movie, then feel free to browse our library of Movie Reviews.
© 1998 - 2024 Qnetwork.com - All logos and trademarks in this site are the property of their respective owner.