Beverly Hills Cop

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) is about a Detroit policeman arriving in Beverly Hills and driving the local force mad, and it was written as an action film. Axel Foley's friend is murdered. The trail leads to California. Axel says he is on leave and goes, and finds an entirely different idea of policing there: clean, procedural, slow. All the humour comes from that gap. The part was Sylvester Stallone's first and he had accepted it. He wanted to adjust the script to the way he speaks. What came back had so much action in it that the budget went far above what Paramount had set aside. Stallone left, and that draft later became Cobra; even the character's surname carried across. Eddie Murphy came in two months before shooting and the film turned into a comedy at that moment. Most of Murphy's dialogue is improvised; moments where the other actors are genuinely laughing stayed in the film. Harold Faltermeyer's synthesiser theme became a hit independent of the film. Martin Brest directed. The ending is ordinary by current standards; the film's strength is not its plot but one performer's rhythm. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: eighties comedy, police action, and Eddie Murphy. Less good for: the plot is thin and some jokes belong to their period.