Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F review – fish-out-of-water Eddie Murphy chases past glories

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Murphy’s maverick cop – and his theme music – are back to fight corruption, but four decades on there’s little energy to enliven their formulaic reunion Eddie Murphy isn’t finished yet – as he proved with his barnstormer of a performance as Blaxploitation pioneer Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name . But there’s something a bit tired and formulaic about this further go-around for his iconic Detroit cop Axel Foley from the Beverly Hills Cop action-comedy franchise which 40 years ago made Murphy an explosive Hollywood star – and whose catchy Axel F theme became an 80s anthem, duly revived here. He’s back for the fourth film, yet again leaving his Detroit turf to be a scruffy fish-out-of-water in the hilariously chi-chi world of Beverly Hills, yet again wryly noticing from the wheel of his car, on the way in, a montage of all the crazy California stuff, including a car registration plate reading: PRE-NUP. Axel’s grownup lawyer daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) is in Beverly Hills, menace
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Mark Kermode on… director Christoper Nolan, a magician of cinema as memory

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From Memento to the Golden Globe-winning Oppenheimer, the head-scrambling British-American director has revelled in using cinema as a time machine – and a conjuring trick

Somewhere between the crowd-pleasing spectacle of Hollywood and the esoteric inventions of European cinema lies the work of Christopher Nolan, the London-born writer-director who next month will receive the British Film Institute’s highest honour – the fellowship. Hailed by the BFI as “a blockbuster auteur and champion of cinema”, five-time Academy Award nominee Nolan is tipped for success at last at the forthcoming Oscars with his recent Golden Globe winner Oppenheimer – a frontrunner for, among others, best film, best director and best adapted screenplay.

The fact that this darkly ruminative three-hour epic has become the highest grossing biopic of all time, outselling the poptastically entertaining Bohemian Rhapsody, says much about Nolan’s ability to connect with mainstream audiences. Stranger still, a substantial number of those who furrowed their brows through the existential crises of Oppenheimer went on to double-bill it with Greta Gerwig’s pink-hued Barbie, creating one of cinema’s most unlikely box-office bonanzas – Barbenheimer!

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