Beverly Hills Cop III

Beverly Hills Cop , 1984 Directed by Martin Brest When I was a kid and we had music class, one thing that almost always occurred was that our teacher, Mr. Jeff, would play the theme from Beverly Hills Cop. So, in a way, I grew up with this film, well, not so much the film as the music of the film, heavy 1980s synth pop. I loved the theme, but would I love the movie? The short answer: Yes. Beverly Hills Cop is something of a relic of an earlier age of filmmaking – an action comedy that is simultaneously hilarious and filled with good action. Eddie Murphy stars as Axel Foley a Detroit cop who heads out to Beverly Hills to investigate the death of a friend. Whilst there, he runs up against the Beverly Hills Police Department, who assign detectives Taggart (John Ashton) and Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) to tail him, and make sure he’s not actually investigating the case. Foley is too smart for them and pranks his way around them, getting closer to art dealer Victor...

Originally written for Sylvester Stallone (who would take parts of the original idea to make Cobra ), Beverly Hills Cop is universally agreed to be the film that made Eddie Murphy a movie star.  Don’t need much more for the intro, on to the tale of the tape… Relevance:  In terms of African-American ‘movie stars’ (which I’ll define as people who you can put the name on the top of the marquee and people will show up regardless of the film), that list is still pretty short more than 20 years later.  Denzel.  Will.  I’d argue those may be the only two who can do anything and everybody will show up.  And both of those brothers came along after Eddie Murphy.  Easy to forget now. Legacy:  Essentially, every one of his starring vehicles after this, as well as every movie starring Chris Rock or Martin Lawrence to name two.  And those are just headliners.  Let’s not forgot...