Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F nostalgia of familiar things

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F nostalgia of familiar things

Eddie Murphy (almost) always has a knack for playing shock cops. But this very targeted nostalgia of familiar things shot no longer has at all the freshness of the 80's classic. 

A few synthesizer notes and we are propelled back 40 years. Axel F, the cult title imagined in 1984 by composer Harold Faltermeyer (no, it's not Crazy Frog), resonates in full force in Beverly Hills Cop 4 (currently online on Netflix) aptly subtitled: Axel F.

Less than a minute into the movie, released exclusively on Netflix, we hear the saxophone blasts of “The Heat Is On,” the Glenn Frey hit from the original Beverly Hills Cop. 

Thirty years after his last trip to California, the Detroit inspector returns to Beverly Hills. This time to protect his daughter, a lawyer, who was drawn into a nasty case of drugs and crooked cops by good old Billy Rosewood. With his usual methods which pay little heed to the civil code, Axel Foley will move heaven and earth to bring down those who threaten his child

Eddie Murphy, still working his wide-as-a-superhighway grin as Detroit detective Axel Foley, cruises around his city as images of everyday people on the streets flash by, a blatant callback to the intro that kicked off the franchise.

Touched by nostalgia of familiar things, Eddie Murphy is no longer the crazy 23-year-old who burst the screen with his devilishly infectious energy. But at the age of 63, he still knows how to give us the banana (and not just in the exhaust pipe). With his wide bandit smile and his legendary chat, Eddie Murphy gives himself for 2 hours to prevent the nice nostalgic kiff from turning into gloomy melancholy. Because apart from a host of cleverly distributed winks - the returns of Serge (Bronson Pinchot), Rosewood and Taggart (Judge Reinhold and John Ashton) are the highlights of the film - this Beverly Hills Cop 4 struggles heavily to justify its existence.

The big set piece that follows gets Axel in the usual trouble with his superiors. (Paul Reiser) Then Axel learns that two people he cares about are in potential danger in L.A.: his estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige of Zola), a criminal defense attorney representing a client who may have been framed by corrupt cops, and Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), Axel’s old buddy who’s also entangled in exposing the truth about the same cops nostalgia of familiar things

The father/daughter drama that underpins the entire (meager) storyline is exhausting. And the new faces, Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, never manage to breathe fresh air so the saga needed to motivate its much-needed comeback...

Faster than you can say Harold Faltermeyer, Axel is back in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, trying to solve a case that is 100 percent outside of his jurisdiction, seeing as how this man works in Michigan.