Mark Molloy, the director of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, still remembers the first time he encountered Axel Foley.
“My uncle had a VHS player, which was rare where I grew up in rural Australia,” Molloy told Netflix. “He put [Beverly Hills Cop] on, and I remember lying on the carpet watching it. I was just in awe. I’d never seen a movie like it, for one. But Eddie [Murphy], Axel Foley, the jacket, LA, Beverly Hills — everything just felt so exotic to me.”
Nearly every member of the Axel F team remembers loving Beverly Hills Cop from afar. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s brother taught him how to play “Axel F,” the film’s earworm theme song, on the piano; Taylour Paige marveled at early streetwear icon Axel’s casual sense of style; Kevin Bacon watched Murphy’s star rise as Bacon caught fire in Footloose the same year. And even series stalwarts Judge Reinhold and John Ashton feel its long afterglow: The two real-life friends still attract attention when they sit down at a restaurant together.
At the center of everything is Eddie Murphy himself and the legacy of Axel Foley. “I don’t look at it like, ‘Oh, I’m reliving it and I have to get back into it for the feeling,’ ” he told Netflix. “I’ve played the character several times already, so I know him.” So do we.
“Anyone that saw the original Beverly Hills Cop, you’re going to love this movie,” Murphy continued. “And even if you haven’t seen it, this movie stands by itself and you can jump right into it.” But if you have seen the original, there are a few pointed references that might just take you back to your first time meeting Axel. Join us on a tour of Beverly Hills Cop’s Beverly Hills.
Where is Axel Foley from?
A glance at his infamous Detroit Lions jacket will tell you exactly where the fast-talking cop hails from: Michigan’s Motor City. In the original film, Murphy also wears a “Mumford Phys. Ed Dept.” T-shirt with an unlikely origin story: Northwest Detroit’s Samuel C. Mumford High School is Beverly Hills Cop star producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s alma mater. (Murphy himself is from New York City, but has another connection to Mumford: Fellow Saturday Night Live breakout Gilda Radner attended the school as a teenager.)
Like the first three films, Axel F kicks off in Detroit, with Axel attending a Detroit Red Wings game alongside colleague Mike Woody (Kyle S. More). Of course, Axel isn’t just here for some hockey — he’s on the trail of the thieves behind a rash of burglaries. Soon, he and Woody are chasing the robbers through the streets of Motown in a borrowed snowplow: a far cry from the opening of the original film, with Axel hanging out of the back of a moving truck. This time, he’s in control.
Of course, there’s another familiar thing about this car chase: Harold Faltermeyer’s classic Beverly Hills Cop theme tune “Axel F” is blaring once again. In the years since its debut, the melody has been borrowed by artists as wide-ranging as Psy, Murphy Brown and Captain Hollywood, and even Crazy Frog. Now, it’s back in the hands of the film series that invented it, as Axel catches the bike-riding robbers with ease.
Of course, the damage to city property on Axel’s watch means he’s hauled into his superior’s office to get chewed out. But this time, Axel’s boss isn’t Inspector Todd (real-life Detroit police officer Gil Hill, who died in 2016), the hard-ass who was killed in the line of duty in Beverly Hills Cop III. Instead, it’s his old compatriot Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser). Why does Axel return to Beverly Hills?
Axel’s daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), is a hardworking public defender currently defending an innocent man accused of murdering a police officer; when she’s hung out of a parking garage by a group of mask-wearing thugs, things get personal for Axel. He sent her to Beverly Hills as a child to protect her, and this isn’t what he had in mind. Axel’s old pal Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) gives him a call, and Axel jets out to Beverly Hills to reconnect with his daughter.
But when he arrives, Billy is missing — and a group of men are ransacking his office. “Billy has uncovered something that is pretty far-reaching and dangerous for the central characters, as well as a lot of people,” Reinhold said. “He has to be very careful with the knowledge that he has. He’s really on the hunt this time.”
Axel bluffs his way into the room, and we’re able to catch a glimpse of Billy’s Rambo merch collection, first established in Beverly Hills Cop II, before Axel has to escape yet again.
“It was frightfully easy to slip back into it with Eddie,” Reiser told Netflix. “When we did the first film, we had already known each other from the comedy clubs, so we just hit the ground running. I haven’t seen him in a while, but it was very easy to just jump right in. And you get into this police precinct office and all this set dressing, it feels like, ‘Oh yeah, we did this before … a while ago.’ ” Jeffrey reveals he has turned i