Now, how far should one go to commend modest mediocrity? Well I think to be honest the latest soft reboot, requel, whatever you want to call them with Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F deserves more positives than it deserves negatives. However the world of Axel Foley is one that was indeed left in a very bad place with the abysmal Beverly Hills Cop 3 which barley felt at all like it was in line with the previous two films, so in many ways although Axel F is no outstanding feat, it does manage to end it seems the story of Axel Foley on a positive legacy note with a film that feels genuinely of a quality of the best parts of why we fell in love with this world in the first place.
Now as films I do prefer Coming to America to Beverly Hills Cop, although I love Cop, America is an all timer for me. So if there was a Faustian bargain to make one of these soft reboots better than the other than yes, I would take a better Coming 2 America than Axel F – however that is not how things have turned out and I can be more than happy with the very solid return to the world of Axel Foley that we have received. Murphy however remains the binding glue of both soft reboots for me, being on top form in both like we haven’t seen him in a very long time for a litany of reasons, managing to bring to these aged versions of classic characters the classic pathos of his earnestness as a performer, along with his sublime comedy. Speaking of Axel F directly, the first extended comedy scene we receive is very early on in the film and is immediately reminiscent of Murphy at his very best I firmly believe. The gags are flying, the performance on form – it’s the truest of palate cleansers one can wish for after the ‘legacy’ of the third part of this action-comedy classic series. The film is standard, there are no ifs or buts about it, it does hit almost every beat one would expect it to hit, but thankfully it does stay in line with the maturity and visceral nature of both the comedy and action of the first two films. There are no punches pulled here I am happy to admit. The script from Will Beall, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten is a concoction of classic tropes from the franchise and films just of this ilk, so by no means don’t go in expecting anything revolutionary, but what the script does offer is a really solid narrative to allow for a lot of great action and a lot more great comedy. In regards to the action in fact, Mark Molloy as a director here delivers top scale sequences with a real practicality to them and gristle. Stalwarts of the classic cast blend well with new entries into the world and all of them chiefly never get in the way of the powerhouse that is Murphy, who although his aged quality brings a slightly new flavour to Axel, still manages for the most part to feel like the sublime engine that sets these films apart from many others in its sub-genre. Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt amongst this new crew all deliver, along with many returning faces who all somehow feel more natural here thirty years on, then they did in the third part of the series in the heyday times.
A perfectly average 6 or 7/10 that is on the better spectrum of what a soft reboot can be, largely because it focussed on the characters we actually like and didn’t attempt some botched try at bringing in a new lead for these films moving forward. Murphy leads the returning cast and comedically everybody is back to form, even if of course action wise everybody is a touch older now. There is a little bit too much blatant nostalgia in the dialogue for me, lots of “can’t believe we’re back” that really didn’t need to be literally spoken out load as it often was. But Mark Molloy has brought older and newer together to make a fine to good action comedy that is a far harder alchemy that I think people truly realise.
P.S. Stop releasing these bloody films onto Netflix please, this film would have definitely been better in a cinema and to be honest is of cinema quality, why one earth did I have to watch it alone in my front room?
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Thomas Carruthers
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