P&AM 93: “Beverly Hills Cop”
“You know, this is the cleanest and nicest police car I've ever been in in my life. This thing's nicer than my apartment.”
1984 • R • 1h 45mins • Watch trailer • Stream on Netflix • Rent it
💎 Streaming Gems: You’re paying for Netflix but what’s good on here?
You’re reading Pizza & A Movie. You walk into your pizza joint and the air smells like crushed tomatoes, basil and oregano. You pick up your pie and ask the guy at the counter, “Hey, what should I rent to go with this?” Tonight he says, “You ever see the one where the nutty professor goes to Beverly Hills?” He’s gotta mean 1984’s Eddie Murphy action comedy about a Detroit fish outta water, Beverly Hills Cop. Let’s hit the streets.
Here’s the plot. Detroit detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is in the doghouse. See, a sting he didn’t exactly clear with the boss ruins several city blocks. His boss says to change his ways or get out. After Axel’s pal Mikey (James Russo) gets served bullets for dinner by a mysterious heavy outside Axel’s apartment, Axel does get out—to LA. But doesn’t change his ways.
Now Axel’s in Beverly Hills burning his vacation days while on the trail of Mikey’s killers. Another friend, Jenny (Lisa Elibacher), points him toward Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff), a local fat cat businessman. Turns out Mikey moved some merchandise for Maitland. And maybe Mikey’s sticky fingers got him dirt napped by Maitland’s dead-eyed goon Zach (Jonathan Banks). Local cops Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton) follow Axel’s every move. Can Axel stay one step ahead of them? What’s Maitland really up to? And will Axel survive long enough to find out?
I grew with on questionable quality Eddie Murphy movies. Guy always had some zany new character (or a dozen) gettin’ up to low-brow hijinks. I had the impression then and now that Murphy and his boundless energy were on to the next thing juuust before the check bounced on the last one. Because you get your next job in the movie biz years before your previous project comes out, no one really knows if they’re on a winning streak or a losing one.
So how’d the Klumps guy make maybe the best buddy cop movie of all time?
Axel Cobretti
Well he didn’t do it alone. Three minds are responsible, the first of which was film exec Don Simpson.
The year was 1977. Simpson had the seed of an idea: A cop’s cop from East LA gets sent to fancy pants Beverly Hills. Simpson hired a writer to water that story and grow it into a movie tree. His pen man, Danilo Bach, moved the main character’s roots to Pittsburgh and gave ‘em the last name Axel. The most ’77 cool guy cop name humanly possible. But with too many other projects cookin’, this one got shelved.
Then Simpson produced Flashdance (’83). With a hit on his hands, the studio got out their checkbook and asked, “What next?” Simpson said, “I got the perfect idea already! Let’s put a cop in Beverly Hills.” He dusted off Bach’s script, got it a rewrite to add lotsa laughs, and went to casting.
The path to a lead was rocky, ayyy! I promise that joke’s gonna kill in about three sentences. First they signed Mickey Rourke, but he left to make something else, probably The Pope of Greenwich Village (’84). Also in the running: Al Pacino, Harrison Ford, James Caan. Then the role fell into the meaty, veiny hands of a guy you mighta heard of by the name of Sylvester Stallone.
Famously chill Stallone didn’t change much. Just cut out the humor, which I assume was something he’d never heard of and didn’t care for. And he renamed the main character “Axel Cobretti”. And had Jenny fall in love with him. And killed off most of the main characters halfway through. And gave himself a fancy gun. And rewrote the finale—a shootout at Maitland’s estate—as … well, I’ll let him tell you. Here’s Stallone sometime in the ‘00s:
“I re-wrote the script to suit what I do best, and by the time I was done, it looked like the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan on the beaches of Normandy. Believe it or not, the finale was me in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train being driven by the ultra-slimy bad guy.”
I do believe it, Sly. But two weeks before shooting, Stallone dropped out. Two possible reasons why.
Stallone says he chose to focus on his next picture, Rhinestone (’84). It costarred Dolly Parton and was based on a Glen Campbell tune from ’75 called Rhinestone Cowboy. Sounds like the kinda thing that would take every ounce of a person’s focus. Sure.
Producer Simpson tells a different story. Says he got Stallone’s name bumped to the top of the list at a Swiss clinic that was experimenting with injecting sheep hormones into dudes to give them more severe erections. What could go wrong? Allegedly Stallone jetted off to Switzerland immediately after sheering, sorry, hearing the good news, leaving the project without a star.
Look, we’ll never know for sheep, I mean, sure. But whatever the reason, Simpson recast the role two days later. He picked the opposite of Sylvester Stallone—Eddie Murphy. Murphy helped reshape the film to suit a young Black lead instead of Rambo. For his part Stallone saved the material he wrote, later turning it into Cobra (’86).
Eddie Murph-who?
But why Eddie Murphy? Right then he was the most exciting guy around. Check this out:
’76: Murphy starts doing standup in clubs even though he’s still in high school. Mom sent him to summer school because he cut class so much.
’80: Becomes a cast member on Saturday Night Live at age 19, going on to do 65 episodes and basically saving the show.
’82: Costars in 48 Hrs. with Nick Nolte, the first buddy cop movie ever.
’83: Costars in Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd (SNL alum).
’83: Records his Grammy-winning comedy album Eddie Murphy: Comedian.
Over a three year span, Murphy’d gone from comedy club fave to being offered the lead in a big movie. Seeing him on-screen in Beverly Hills Cop, I understand why. He’s smart, fast and natural. Doesn’t even seem to be acting. His standup and improv chops come in clutch as Axel talks his way into or out of anything. Also, and there’s no way to overstate this, Murphy is hot. Hey, I didn’t see myself saying that either, but he’s physically confident and wears the hell out of a mustache. Facts, man.
Focused like a dot of sun through a magnifying glass to burn ants on the sidewalk, the project, the star and the timing all came together to make Beverly Hills Cop one for the record books.
Big Mac Sauce
Here’s an easy mistake. When you watch Cop, you can think it’s all Eddie. But it’s not. Earlier I asked how the Klumps guy made this and said it took three minds to pull it off. It took 1) producer Don Simpson and 2) star Eddie Murphy. But we haven’t covered 3)—director Martin Brest.
This is Brest’s third movie, and his first real one. He was a precise guy who took his time but wasn’t mean about it. On the spectrum of Apatow to Kubrick, Brest falls somewhere between the middle and Kubrick. Guy’s got a steady hand but he was only ten years older than Murphy. They made natural collaborators. Older directors would have had their way on everything or given in to everything served up by youth they didn’t really understand.
Brest’s approach on-set was to let Murphy off the leash. For a while. Let him do all his crowd-pleasing stand-up-style ideas. All the swearing, all the abrasion, all the wiener jokes. Then Brest did a few more takes to see what Murphy had after that. You can see Brest’s deft touch about 15 minutes into Beverly Hills Cop 2, a movie Brest did not direct. The sequel sees Axel and company crashing a party at the Playboy Mansion. In that scene, Rosewood asks where the suspect is and Axel replies, “Follow your dick.” I guess every penis-haver literally does follow it unless they’re walking backwards, but I don’t know what that means at all in the scene. In his movie, Brest let material like that hit the cutting room floor. He wanted more. And he got it.
His secret sauce was patience.
The result? A refinement very few other Murphy characters would ever have. Axel’s a troublemaker, but a decent guy too. That’s what makes Beverly Hills Cop a great buddy cop movie instead just a broad comedy. Brest got the Eddie no one else ever did.
Martin Brest went on to make only five more movies. His next, Midnight Run (’88) with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, builds on what he learned to do with Cop. His later run ends with Meet Joe Black (’98), a masterpiece in my eyes and no one else’s, and Gigli (’03), the Ben Affleck / Jennifer Lopez crime dramedy about turning a gay woman straight by not taking no for an answer. A real career-ender. Brest is still alive today at 73 but hasn’t made a movie since.
Box Office Robbery
Beverly Hills Cop opened on Wednesday, December 5, 1984 at number one. Nabbed $15M on opening weekend alone. Its budget was $14M but Brest turned it in for $13M, which is why he’s the brest—sorry, best. That means Cop was in the black after just five days in theaters. It went on to hold the top spot for thirteen straight weeks, raking in $235M in ’84 dollars. It’s the best selling R-rated movie of all time.
“But what about Deadpool & Wolverine,” you ask? Pal, that made $583M. Adjusted for inflation, Cop made $712M. So put those adamantium claws away.
We know folks saw Beverly Hills Cop in droves. But what did critics make of it?
The New York Times watched “Eddie Murphy doing what he does best: playing the shrewdest, hippest, fastest-talking underdog in a rich man's world.” Shrewd Roger Ebert saw it for the thin script skating by on Murphy magic that it was. “Any movie that begins with a chase is not going to be heavy on originality and inspiration.” But what he called a film full of clichés is a big part of why it’s so fun to watch now.
Murphy ran the franchise into the ground with two more outings. Beverly Hills Cop 2 made money, but critics shook their heads at the quality. By 3, both audiences and reviewers were holding their noses. Producer Don Simpson and his partner, Jerry Bruckheimer, went on to make Top Gun (’86), another great picture about guys being dudes.
I’m not sure if Netflix’s new entry, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, is any good. Might be, I haven’t gotten around to it. Been too busy watching movies from forty years ago, like this! Happy big four-oh, Beverly Hills Cop. You’ve aged like a fine wine, my friend.
Like this review? Share it with a pal who would too! And if you’ve never seen this—like I hadn’t until two weeks ago—put it on this weekend! It’s on Netflix anyway. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll have an Eddie Murphy grin and the Axel F theme stuck in your head for days.