BEVERLY HILLS COP. Directed by Martin Brest; written by Daniel Petrie, Jr.; produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer for Paramount. Starring Eddie Murphy. Rated R (language and violence).
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On reflection, I wonder why I enjoyed this movie as much as I did. It has a lot going against it—a routine cops and robbers plot, generally lackluster co-stars, and a bucketful of gratuitous violence. And it has only one real plus: Eddie Murphy. But that is more than enough to make Beverly Hills Cop hugely entertaining, in spite of its shortcomings.
Axel (Murphy) is one of those unconventional young policemen you see so often these days in movies. He's brash, irreverent, enthusiastic and not hesitant about bending procedures until they snap. When an old friend is (graphically) murdered outside his apartment, it's a foregone conclusion that he'll track down the culprit. Even though it's not his case, and even though the trail leads far from his native inner-city Detroit to the fairy-tale land of Beverly Hills.
There he predictably gets into dust-ups with both the swank Beverly Hills police (the back seats of their cars are nicer than Axel's apartment) and the chic but creepy thugs who killed his friend. Murphy handles all the confrontations in his particularly outrageous and funny style. The scenes with the police work better, perhaps because the threat of violence doesn't confuse the issue there, as it does when he's up against the hoods.
But Murphy usually handles the balance between menace and humor well. Only toward the end of the movie does the violence overwhelm the comedy for a while. The gore is all the more offensive for being unnecessary, at least at the level reached in the final shoot-out. The villains in Beverly Hills Cop can get their evil message across just by looks and tone of voice (especially Steven Berkoff as the sinister art dealer). No need for all that blasting.
Murphy's supporting cast is full of straight men (with one straight woman), except for a near-upstaging by Bronson Pinchot as an art gallery employee and maker of espresso. Most of the others are adequate foils, and gracefully surrender the spotlight to Murphy. The story itself is perhaps harder to swallow because of this. (Axel is always right, always gets the better of his less streetwise but supposedly more experienced colleagues.) But any other, more realistic, arrangement would not have been nearly as funny.
Fans of Eddie Murphy know who they are and what to expect from his kind of comedy. So all I really have to say about his performance is that they won't be disappointed. At the same time, moviegoers who find him vulgar and offensive won't consider seeing Beverly Hills Cop in the first place—and they shouldn't! But I expect it might make Murphy a few new converts all the same.
December 12, 1984