{"id":44418,"date":"2024-07-03T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=44418"},"modified":"2024-07-03T08:00:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T12:00:56","slug":"beverly-hills-cop-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/03\/beverly-hills-cop-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"Beverly Hills Cop (1984)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Now Available to Stream<\/a> and on Physical Home Media<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Director Martin Brest\u2019s film came at just the right time at just the right period of the 1980\u2019s. This was a time where Eddie Murphy was writing his own ticket in Hollywood and could do whatever he wanted, and with \u201cBeverly Hills Cop,\u201d he managed to carve out a pretty underrated action hero. In spite of the film\u2019s massive success and cultural influence Axel Foley is often ignored in the annals of movie heroes alongside John McLane or Dutch. It\u2019s probably because Eddie Murphy plays Axel more in the arena of comedy than he does as a straight forward police officer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After his childhood buddy is murdered while visiting Detroit, rebellious cop Axel Foley follows the leads to Beverly Hills, Calif., under the auspices of a vacation. He checks in with old friend Jenny Summers and starts to believe her boss, art dealer Victor Maitland, might somehow be involved in the murder. However, Lt. Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department does not trust Foley, and hinders his search for evidence.<\/p>\n

Even in a decade filled with action movie gems, Murphy is less a hero with a penchant for comedy, and more a comedian with a knack for heroism. That helps to shield the inherent imperfections of \u201cBeverly Hills Cop\u201d through and through. Despite its strong performance from Murphy, and iconic theme song \u201cAxel F\u201d (as well as the equally excellent \u201cThe Heat is On\u201d and \u201cNeutron Dance\u201d), Brest\u2019s picture suffers from so much tonal inconsistency that it\u2019s distracting. One moment Axel Foley is trading one-liners with a bourgeois art dealer, the next his best friend is being brutally murdered at point blank range.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One moment Axel is shoving bananas up the exhaust pipes of rival police officers, the next there\u2019s a massive and pretty bloody shoot out that almost instantaneously saps away the comedic momentum Murphy built up for the first two acts of the film. The awkward pacing and shifts in tone is what makes \u201cBeverly Hills Cops\u201d a pretty good movie, rather than an all time great one. Star Murphy is still really good in his starring role, setting the template for what would become a character that\u2019s still imitated to this day. Without Axel Foley would we have \u201cRush Hour\u201d Detective James Carter, or \u201cBad Boys\u201d own Mike and Marcus?<\/p>\n

Murphy is able to pull a lot of scenes out of their respective ruts, adding some interesting comic punctuation that\u2019s great when it hits their mark. His mocking of another African American officer\u2019s cadence is peak Eddie Murphy, and a lot of what he brought to SNL in his early days. I can\u2019t say I loved \u201cBeverly Hills Cop,\u201d but I acknowledge that for self respecting Eddie Murphy fans, it is an absolute mandatory experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now Available to Stream and on Physical Home Media. Director Martin Brest\u2019s film came at just the right time at just the right period of the 1980\u2019s. This was a time where Eddie Murphy was writing his own ticket in Hollywood and could do whatever he wanted, and with \u201cBeverly Hills Cop,\u201d he managed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[58,219,240,313,696,703],"class_list":["post-44418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-comedy","tag-crime","tag-eddie-murphy","tag-murder","tag-mystery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44421,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44418\/revisions\/44421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}