On July 1, Netflix released Beverly Hills Cop: Alex F, exactly 30 years after Beverly Hills Cop III was released. To celebrate, FilmDungeon checked out the original trilogy which was an enjoyable trip down memory lane.
Beverly Hills Cop (1984, Martin Brest)
The tune is great, his laugh is a riot, and his inventive tricks to get things done are inspiring. Eddie Murphy stars as the wise-ass Detroit cop who goes to Beverly Hills to investigate the murder of his friend. He quickly makes new friends, including detective Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) who both return in the new movie! He makes plenty of enemies too because not everybody loves Axel’s freewheeling style. In Beverly Hills everything is done by the book, which clashes with his street smart ways. This is the basic gimmick of the first movie and it works like a charm. Murphy is in top form here, delivering funny wisecracks rapid fire style. The banana in the tailpipe is still hilarious and the traffic light gag that follows it is even better. If the new movie can capture any of this comedy magic, it will be fantastic. Let’s hope so…
Beverly Hills Cop II (1987, Tony Scott)
The second movie sees many of the cast and crew members return. Only directing duties were taken over by Tony Scott who had just delivered Top Gun (produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, who also produced the first two Beverly Hills Cop movies). When his friend Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox) is shot, Foley returns to Beverly Hills to help solve the so-called Alphabet Crimes, a series of expertly carried out robberies. There is a new Chief of Police, and he is the biggest asshole of all time and arguably the film’s greatest villain. Murphy still has all these ‘types’ he can play to get things done, and they are often pretty funny. Only the script is poor, and some jokes didn’t age particularly well. But the dynamics between Foley, Taggert and Rosewood is still great, and Rosewood’s development to gun-toting, Rambo-style hero, is hilarious. These are the best two things about this sequel.
Beverly Hills Cop III (1994, John Landis)
More bad guys, more guns, more violent kills, but less humor. The third film in the series was written by Steven E. de Souza, the screenplay writer of Die Hard and Die Hard 2, and he turned it into Die Hard in an amusement park. Only since many of the action scenes would be too expensive, they turned the action down and made it more about Axel’s investigation taking place in an amusement park. Boring! Worse still, Murphy told new director John Landis that he preferred to play Axel as a more mature character. Bronson Pinchot, who reprises his role of Serge from the first film here, later said Murphy was pretty depressed during the shoot. It shows on the screen: Murphy’s performance comes across as mostly joyless. The film does deliver the series most dangerous villain with Ellis DeWald, played perfectly by Timothy Carhart. Still, overall this third entry was a letdown, so let’s hope Beverly Hills Cop: Alex F rocks the house again, so the series can conclude on a high note after all.
The greatest Christmas Double Bill in history! Bruce Willis stars in the role that made him a super star: John McClane is an old style hero: smoking cigarettes, cracking jokes and killing bad guys. The first Die Hard (1988) is considered the greatest action film of all time. Why is that so? I tried to analyze it and came up with this. First of all; it is really, really tense. John McClane (Willis) is locked up in a building with a bunch of heavily armed and completely ruthless German terrorists. What are the odds of survival? Minimal. This is survival action optimally done. It is fun to watch a guy – who is not really scared of death, but definitely no narcissistic psychopath either – face impossible odds. Secondly, the screenplay is intelligent and the casting is terrifically done. Part 2 is off course (this is the sequel after all) BIGGER! It takes place at an airport, which is taken over by terrorists who want to free a South American dictator (Franco Nero) who is landing soon. Groovy! In a magazine article on an airplane read by one of the characters, a picture is shown of Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in Lethal Weapon 2. This is a sequel that was indeed even better than the original. Die Hard 2 is not, although you could argue for it. Film critic Roger 
Ebert thought so and wrote 
airplane crash. Thereby, they make the main baddie – William Sadler – even worse than Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) in the first one. Still, Die Hard 2 loses momentum a little bit during the second half (especially after the clever plot twist) and therefore I still think the first movie is superior. The endings of both movies give you this very warm Christmas feeling indeed. In part 1, John meets his pal Al for the first time, and then Al kills Karl and proves he is ready again for joining the force (he got a desk job after accidentally shooting a thirteen-year old kid with a fake gun). In the second movie, John blows up the plane with terrorists and thereby creates landing lights for all the other planes that were close to crashing, including the one that carries his wife. Then he tells her he loves her so much and they carry off in a modern sledge accompanied by Frank Sinatra’s ‘Let It Snow’. It makes me all warm inside and the same goes for the fantastic first part ending.Therefore, Die Hard is just the greatest Christmas movie ever. Die Hard 2 adds to the fun.
FRAGMENTEN UIT HET SCHEMERLAND 