When thinking about what makes an action hero, there are qualifications. A check list of sorts. There’s more to it than having pinpoint accuracy with a pistol, being able to drive a car a hundred miles per hour through crowded streets, or escaping a dramatic explosion just in the nick of time. No, there’s much more than that. The character must have grit. They must be responsible and serious (when it’s necessary). They must deal justice. And of course, they have to be hard-core. And though Eddie Murphy’s character Axel Foley tells a good joke and has a hearty laugh, his role as the action hero in "Beverly Hills Cop" pleasantly works.
Foley is a Downtown Detroit Cop, and with his combination of quick thinking, improvisation, and street smarts, he excels as an unorthodox detective. After an opening montage of random Detroit settings, we meet Foley in the back of a truck containing hundreds of boxes of cigarettes — he’s undercover. Suspicious cops come snooping around, and an exciting car-truck chase ensues. We assume by how Foley handles the situation that this type of thing is routine for him, even though he is constantly gets in trouble for doing things his own way. When his best friend Mikey (James Russo), fresh out of prison, visits Foley and is killed outside of his apartment later that night, Axel leaves his natural setting in Detroit to “vacation” in the sunny environment where Mikey had been living for the past six months: Beverly Hills.
Axel instantly causes a commotion, bargaining himself into a luxury suite by claiming he’s a "Rolling Stone" writer waiting for an interview with Michael Jackson, and charging the desk clerk with racism. He screams and hollers his way from the desk clerk to one of the hotel’s managers before finally getting the room at half the price in an outrageous, amusing, and slightly overplayed rant. A lot of the film’s other memorable comedic moments rely on Murphy’s unique ability to overact just as this scene had.
Foley then meets up with an old friend named Jenny Summers (Lisa Eilbacher). Jenny works in an art gallery owned by the slimy millionaire Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff). He is also who Mikey was working for, and when Foley asks Victor too many questions about Mikey’s death, the security team throws him out the window. After another hilarious confrontation, this time with the local police, Foley himself is investigated by two of Beverly’s cops — Detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Sergeant Taggart (John Ashton).
The way the cops in Beverly Hills work is unrecognizable to Foley — their technology is further advanced, the department is clean and organized, and most importantly to Lieutenant Bogomil (Ronny Cox), they do everything strictly by the book. But even though Foley is hundreds of miles from his jurisdiction, throughout the film, he cleverly outwits the hometown police. At one point, he is able to distract the cops that are tailing him long enough to stuff bananas in their tailpipe.
Because of his numerous shenanigans, it is easy for the characters, as well as the audience, to not take Axel seriously. Bogomil himself admits to finding it hard to believe that Axel is one of Detroit’s top detectives. And if this statement was issued just ten minutes earlier in the film, it would be nearly impossible to refute it. But Axel had just proven himself to Rosewood, Taggart, and the viewers just moments before. In a strip bar of all places. Foley had brought the cops to the club for company, but midway through a glass of scotch, he spots two suspicious-looking men entering the room. A look comes across his face that feels almost inappropriate — he’s all business. He orders Rosewood and Taggart around the suspects, and working together, they apprehend the armed robbers. It’s the best and most fulfilling moment in the film.
