Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review: "short on plot, long on 80s nostalgia"

It’s been 40 years since Eddie Murphy first played detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, a box office smash back when that still meant something. An amped up sequel (directed by Tony Scott) followed in 1987, then 1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III suggested the franchise had run its course. But that was before blockbusters from the 1980s became legacy acts, always ready to be revived with the original stars running through their characters’ greatest hits — a lot older, a little thicker around the waist, definitely a bit slower, but still basically unchanged.

Murphy – who left action movies behind in the 1990s – has weathered the years better than most of his contemporaries, so seeing him running and gunning once more in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F isn’t as jarring as it might have been. A real-time sequel, the film makes a pretence of having Axel’s maverick status rub up against changing attitudes, but mainly so he can charm his way through it and do things his own way as he once again leaves his native Detroit to help solve a case in La La Land.

This time it’s his lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) who’s in trouble after she takes on a case investigating a dirty cop. Estranged from each other, their frosty relationship gives the fish-out-of-water formula a touchy-feely update as Axel’s glib jokes fail to impress either Jane or the progressive new detective in the Beverly Hills police department he eventually teams up with. Played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he’s a decent foil for Foley, though it’s not long before due process goes out the window and the film gets back to the retro business of killing bad guys first, asking questions later.

In this context it’s a shame Kevin Bacon’s turn as a corrupt cop in league with the drug cartels isn’t as juicy as it could have been. But let’s not kid ourselves: this is really just about delivering a hit of nostalgia and, to this end, debut director Mark Molloy handles everything with workmanlike proficiency, delivering contrived returns for franchise stalwarts and ensuring barely a scene goes by that doesn’t reference something in the first two movies.

Given that John Krasinski’s own Covid-delayed sequel to his surprise 2018 horror hit A Quiet Place kicked off with a heart-in-mouth prologue depicting day one of the alien invasion crisis, there’s something a little redundant about A Quiet Place: Day One, a self-explanatory third instalment with a new setting and mostly all new characters (Djimon Hounsou’s character from Part Two gets a small introduction). This time we’re in New York with Lupito Nyong’o’s Sam, a poet with terminal cancer who’s on a day trip to the city when the alien hunters arrive and start wiping out anything that makes a sound.

As with the previous two instalments, the aliens are numerous, sightless, well armoured, sonically enhanced and somewhat vulnerable to water, things the surviving humans here seem to have figured out within minutes of their arrival (the water thing once again brings to mind the goofy twist in M Night Shyamalan’s alien invasion movie Signs). Credulity stretching logic gaps not withstanding, though, new writer/director Michael Sarnoski (who impressed with his Nicolas Cage-starring debut Pig a couple of years back) keeps a healthy focus on character over spectacle and, in the early set-pieces, approaches it as a proper silent film, with Lyong’o’s wonderfully expressive face speaking volumes.

The plot takes shape around her character’s determination to make a final pilgrimage to a pizzeria in Harlem that holds sentimental value for her, a development that feels egregiously quirky at first but which gradually deepens into something quite moving. Less successful is the bond she forms with Joseph Quinn’s equally expressive Eric, a bewildered English law student who attaches himself to her after a bizarre interaction with her pet cat. Still, the set pieces are solid (if a little familiar) and though there doesn’t seem to be much more mileage in this franchise, Sarnoski proves he can play in the big leagues.

Yet another derivative John Wick-style action bloodbath, the aptly named Kill arrives tooting its own horn about being the most violent film ever set in India, an ignoble claim to fame that Dev Patel’s recent Monkey Man may take issue with. Full of relentlessly stabby, head-pummelling fight scenes, as well as a fair share of honking melodrama, it revolves around Amrit (rising Indian star Lakshya), an army commando on a train back to New Delhi after crashing the engagement party of childhood sweetheart Tulika (Tanya Maniktala). Tulika and her wealthy family are also on the train, so when it’s subsequently overrun with armed bandits intent on robbing the passengers, Amrit’s overzealous attempt to protect Tulika sets in motion an escalating display of brutality as bandits murder passenger with extreme prejudice, forcing Amrit to respond by finding evermore inventive ways to garrotte, gouge or gut the bad guys.

If the setting also brings back memories of Under Siege 2 (and every other Die Hard knock-off), writer/director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat uses the confines of the carriages to up the severity of the close-quarter carnage in ways that are, admittedly, occasionally inventive and thrilling. Alas, his more-is-more approach soon proves deadening and he starts sacrificing key characters in a cynical bid to keep you invested in a protagonist whose own actions are pretty much the reason so much innocent blood is spilled in the first place.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is available to stream on Netflix from 3 July; A Quiet Place: Day One is in cinemas now; Kill is in cinemas from 5 July