Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Directed by Mark Molloy, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F follows Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley as he’s drawn into a violent conspiracy after his estranged daughter (Taylour Paige’s Jane) is threatened. Filmmaker Molloy, working from Will Beall, Tom Gormican, and Tom Gormican’s screenplay, delivers a mostly top-notch sequel that fares better than the second and third installments of this series, as the movie, which admittedly can’t quite hit the highs achieved by Martin Brest’s superb original film, moves at an impressively brisk pace and has been suffused with a whole host of funny, memorable set-pieces (eg Axel’s initial exploits at a hockey game, an inventive chase sequence involving a helicopter, etc) – with the persistently watchable atmosphere perpetuated (and heightened) by the efforts of a first-class roster of performers. (Murphy is terrific here, as expected, while periphery players like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, and Kevin Bacon provide more-than-able color around the movie’s margins.) And while the 118 minute running time admittedly does result a small handful of lulls, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, buoyed by its frequently hilarious sensibilities (eg Foley’s run-in with an especially tenacious meter maid), primarily comes off as a better-than-expected followup that is, on top of everything else, one of the better action pictures to come around in quite some time.

*** out of ****