Beverly Hills Cop

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Beverly Hills Cop

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Martin Brest
Produced by Don Simpson
Jerry Bruckheimer
Screenplay by Daniel Petrie, Jr.
Story by Danilo Bach
Daniel Petrie, Jr.
Starring Eddie Murphy
Judge Reinhold
John Ashton
Lisa Eilbacher
Ronny Cox
Steven Berkoff
Music by Harold Faltermeyer
Cinematography Bruce Surtees
Editing by Arthur Coburn
Billy Weber
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) December 5, 1984 (1984-12-05)
Running time 106 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $15 million[1]
Box office $316,360,478

Beverly Hills Cop is a 1984 American comedy-action film directed by Martin Brest and starring Eddie Murphy, Lisa Eilbacher, John Ashton, Judge Reinhold, and Ronny Cox. Murphy stars as Axel Foley, a street-smart Detroit cop who heads to Beverly Hills, California, to solve the murder of his best friend.

This first film in the Beverly Hills Cop series shot Murphy to international stardom, won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture, was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical, and even received an Oscar nomination in 1985. It earned an estimated US$234 million at the domestic box office, narrowly making it the biggest hit of 1984 (ahead of Ghostbusters).

Contents

[edit] Plot

Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is a young, talented, but reckless Detroit police detective, having been reformed from his hoodlum years. His latest act of attempting to catch crooks through an unauthorized cigarette smuggling sting operation goes sour when some uniformed officers show up, questioning their suspicious activity, and earns him the wrath of his boss, Inspector Douglas Todd (Gilbert R. Hill).

Axel's childhood friend and former criminal cohort, Mikey Tandino (James Russo), long gone from Detroit, shows up in his apartment (by breaking in) and tells him he is working in Beverly Hills, California, as a security guard, through the efforts of a mutual friend, Jenny Summers (Lisa Eilbacher). After going out to have a few drinks, both men return drunk to Axel's apartment, where Axel is knocked unconscious and Mikey is confronted by two thugs, questioning him about some missing German bearer bonds that he had shown Axel earlier. Mikey is then murdered. After being refused the investigation because of his close personal ties, Axel uses the guise of taking vacation time to head to Beverly Hills to ascertain the motive and solve the crime. While there, he finds Jenny and learns from her that Mikey's recent boss is respected local art dealer Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff), who had hired Mikey as a favor to Jenny. Axel decides to question Victor about Mikey's employment and Victor responds by having him thrown through the window by his bodyguards. Axel is promptly arrested and meets Beverly Hills police officers Sgt. John Taggart (John Ashton), Det. Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), and Lt. Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox). Bogomil assigns Rosewood and Taggart to follow Foley, and after a series of encounters, including the trio's foiling of a robbery in a striptease bar, the three develop a mutual respect.

On the trail of Mikey's suspected killers, Axel sneaks into one of Victor Maitland's art warehouses and soon begins to suspect that Victor is involved in some questionable activities, including Mikey's murder. He finds coffee grounds in the warehouse and deduces that Maitland is smuggling drugs, the coffee grounds being used to throw off the drug-sniffing dogs. Evidence of Maitland's unsavory activities soon piles up, but Maitland and his associates eventually catch Foley and Jenny in the warehouse. Maitland kidnaps Jenny, leaving his henchmen to deal with Axel, who is rescued by Rosewood. Axel convinces Taggart, Rosewood, and Bogomil to assist him in bringing Maitland to justice and rescuing Jenny. After a firefight at Maitland's mansion that kills most of his associates, Foley kills Maitland's right-hand man Zack, who was responsible for Mikey's murder. Axel is then shot in the shoulder by Maitland, who appears using Jenny as a shield. Maitland is shot and killed by Foley and Bogomil, saving Jenny's life.

A large police presence gathers at the mansion, and Bogomil fabricates a story for his superior, Chief Hubbard, covering for Foley, Taggart and Rosewood. Realizing he might be out of a job as a police officer due to disobeying his boss' orders, Axel asks Bogomil to speak to Inspector Todd and smooth things over for him. Bogomil initially refuses but when Axel threatens to stay in Beverly Hills and become a private investigator, Bogomil changes his mind. Before Foley leaves Beverly Hills to return home, he asks Taggart and Rosewood to join him for a farewell drink and they accept the invitation. When they ask where they are going, Foley says to them, "Don't worry about it. I've found the perfect place. You guys will love it. Trust me."

[edit] Cast

[edit] Production

[edit] Development

Danilo Bach completed his draft in 1977, seven years prior to production. The earliest version of the script involved a cop in East L.A. who was transferred to Beverly Hills, before evolving into the story of a cop from the East Coast who came to Beverly Hills to avenge the death of his friend. Drafts before the script was locked in (and became more of the comedy it ended up being) gave the cop's name as Axel Elly and set the out-of-Beverly Hills action in Pittsburgh.

When asked by the producers, director Martin Brest flipped a quarter to decide whether to undertake the direction of the film or not. As the movie proved to be an enormous hit, he framed the quarter and hung it on his wall.

[edit] Pre-production

On the DVD featurette, producer Jerry Bruckheimer claimed that the part of Axel Foley was first offered to Mickey Rourke, who signed a $400,000 USD holding contract to do the film. When revisions and other preparations took longer than expected, Rourke left the project after his contract expired to do another film. It was then offered to Sylvester Stallone, with the character of Michael Tandino being his brother, and Jenny Summers being his love interest. Two weeks before filming was to start, Stallone was suddenly out and Eddie Murphy was in, prompting massive rewrites. According to Eddie Murphy on Inside the Actor's Studio, Stallone also envisioned a "harder edged" screenplay. After his departure due to differences in scope (Stallone essentially rewrote Beverly Hills Cop as what would be the 1986 film, Cobra) the role was re-written for Murphy. Besides Stallone and Rourke, other actors who were considered for the role of Axel Foley included Richard Pryor, Al Pacino, and James Caan. In one of the previous drafts written for Sylvester Stallone, Billy Rosewood was called "Siddons" and was killed off half-way through the script during one of the action scenes deemed "too expensive" for Paramount to produce.[2]

In the process of casting the characters of Rosewood and Taggart, the director paired up various finalists and asked them to do some improvisation to get a feel for the chemistry between the actors. He paired up Judge Reinhold and John Ashton and gave them the following direction: "You are a middle aged couple, married for years. You are having a conversation on an average evening." Judge Reinhold immediately picked up a nearby magazine and the two improvised the "5 pounds of red meat in his bowels" bit almost verbatim as it eventually appeared in the movie. This got them the parts. Only after Martin Brest cast Judge Reinhold and John Ashton was the decision made to keep Rosewood alive due to his chemistry with Taggart. The original finale for the Stallone draft of the script took place at night and ended with a car chase between Victor in a Lamborghini and Foley in a turbo-boosted Pontiac GTO. Victor is ultimately killed when his car smashes into an oncoming train.

[edit] Filming

The shooting script was literally pasted together from the half dozen or so scripts written for this project over the years. Police Chief Hubbard (Stephen Elliott) walks into his first scene carrying some rolled-up sheets of paper. It is actually one of many reworked scripts, which was given to him to memorize and rehearse only minutes before the shooting of the scene started. When they were stuck during production, Eddie Murphy would improvise dialog or create a scene. Murphy improvised many of his comic lines, as did John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. Literally hundreds of takes were ruined by cast members or actors or the director himself, who were unable to stop laughing during shooting because of this. During the "super-cops" monologue, Ashton is pinching his face hard and looking down in apparent frustration. In actuality, Ashton is laughing. Reinhold put his hand in his pocket and pinched his thigh really hard to prevent himself from laughing.

Many of the opening shots were actually filmed in Detroit, unbeknownst to the actors, who later gave their consent. In fact, Martin Brest was escorted by the police, who would refuse to follow him when they thought it was too dangerous. Brest and crew, however, soldiered on with their work, unescorted. The T-shirt that Murphy wears in the film is from Mumford, a real high school in Detroit attended by one of the filmmakers. When the film came out, the school received orders for the shirts from customers all over the world.

Axel Foley's boss, played by Gilbert R. Hill, was a real-life detective in the Detroit Police Department, who later became a Detroit City Council member and mayoral candidate, losing to Kwame Kilpatrick in 2001. When filming the "Beverly Hills Police Station" sequences, Murphy was feeling groggy from the stuffy environment and was described "to be so pure, that he didn't drink coffee". Eventually, Murphy relented by taking small sips of coffee just to stay awake for filming inside the building. As a result of the first sips of coffee, Murphy's performance in the scene skyrocketed and he ad-libbed the part about Rosewood and Taggart being super-cops without having the capes.

In the art gallery, there is a large art piece containing several figures. One of the figures, a maitre'd with a chain around its neck, is modeled after director Martin Brest. Originally, two men were supposed to be working in the art gallery scenes. When the director heard Bronson Pinchot's Serge impersonation, however, he thought it was so hilarious he scaled back the other part to give Pinchot more screen time. The second actor shows up only briefly with his shirt collar open too wide, on which Serge comments. Pinchot got the accent and mannerisms for his character Serge from a crew member he worked with on an earlier project. Like his character, that crew member always said, "Don't be stupid." In addition to getting the inspiration of Serge from a crew member on Beverly Hills Cop, Pinchot would later go on to play Balki Bartokomous on Perfect Strangers (1986) and use a variation of the "Don't be stupid" line. Every time he was asked something he would reply "Of course not, don't be ridiculous."

During his tirade at the Beverly Palms Hotel, Foley pretends to be writing an article called "Michael Jackson: Sitting on Top of the World" for Rolling Stone magazine. In real life, Playboy ran an article called "Eddie Murphy: Sitting on Top of the World." The city hall building seen in the film is the actual Beverly Hills City Hall. However, the exterior was very run-down and the plants were dying, so the film crew had to clean it up and grow new plants so it would look better on film.

The scene in which Foley, Rosewood, and Taggart give an explanation to Bogomil about the strip club arrest was improvised according to a making-of featurette. The song which plays during the strip club scene, "Nasty Girl" by Vanity 6, was recommended by the real-life stripper who was hired for the scene.

When trying to find Foley and Rosewood, the Beverly Hills Police control room use a "satellite tracking system" (the ancestor of the modern day Global Positioning System or GPS). Such a system did not exist at the time and was made up to advance the plot, but later did come into existence in real life. The pistol Murphy uses in the movie is a Browning High Power 9mm pistol, widely used by military forces around the world for more than 50 years. It takes a 13 round, double stacked magazine.

[edit] Reception

Beverly Hills Cop was well received by critics and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984.[3][4][5][6] Eddie Murphy, in particular, received much acclaim for his performance. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote "Beverly Hills Cop finds Eddie Murphy doing what he does best: playing the shrewdest, hippest, fastest-talking underdog in a rich man's world. Eddie Murphy knows exactly what he's doing, and he wins at every turn".[7] Richard Schickel of Time magazine felt that "Eddie Murphy exuded the kind of cheeky, cocky charm that has been missing from the screen since Cagney was a pup, snarling his way out of the ghetto".[8] Axel Foley became Murphy's signature role and was ranked number 78 on Empire magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.[9] Also Entertainment Weekly ranked Beverly Hills Cop as the third best comedy film of the last 25 years.

Today, Beverly Hills Cop is regarded as a classic in the comedy genre and holds an 84% approval rating on the aggregate film website Rotten Tomatoes and 60% when counting Top Critics.[10] The film was also picked as one of the 1000 Best Movies Ever Made by The New York Times.[11]

[edit] Box office

The film was released on December 5 and was very anticipated. The film was screened in 1,532 theaters and debuted #1 at box office making $15,214,805 in the first week of release. Thanks to the word of mouth, the film made more money than it did in its first weeks, with the highest one being the fourth week of release, which made $20,064,790. It stayed #1 for 14 non-consecutive weeks and tied along with Tootsie as the second films with most weeks on the top (the first is Titanic). The film earned approximately $234,760,478 domestically and became the highest grossing film of the year 1984, beating Ghostbusters and by the time, the highest grossing R rated comedy film. The film was also the second highest grossing film worldwide in 1984, behind Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It remained that way until The Hangover broke it 25 years later. However, once adjusted for inflation, Beverly Hills Cop is the third highest grossing R rated film of all time, behind only The Exorcist and The Godfather.

[edit] Soundtrack

The soundtrack won a Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special (1986). The instrumental-only title tune "Axel F" is very recognizable and has since been covered by numerous artists. The soundtrack was mastered by Greg Fulginiti, and would feature different artists plus electronic style music.

The soundtrack was released on MCA Records, successor-in-interest to Paramount's old record division, the Famous Music Group (specifically Paramount Records).

The track listing is as follows:

  1. "New Attitude" by Patti LaBelle
  2. "Don't Get Stopped in Beverly Hills" by Shalamar
  3. "Do You Really (Want My Love?)" by Junior
  4. "Emergency" by Rockie Robbins
  5. "Neutron Dance" by Pointer Sisters
  6. "The Heat is On" by Glenn Frey
  7. "Gratitude" by Danny Elfman
  8. "Stir It Up" by Patti LaBelle
  9. "Rock 'N Roll Me Again" by The System
  10. "Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer
Songs not on soundtrack

Though not officially in the soundtrack, "Nasty Girl" by Vanity 6 is heard in the strip club, but is credited in the end credits of the film. Since the film's release in 1984, there has never been an official release of the soundtrack score which was composed by Harold Faltermeyer. The only part of the soundtrack score that has been commercially released is "Axel F", featured on the soundtrack release.

However, two tracks of score were released on B sides to the vinyl singles of "Axel F":

  • "Discovery" - This piece of score is heard in the scene where the drugs are discovered by Axel Foley in the warehouse.
  • "Shootout" - This piece of score is heard in the scene where Billy Rosewood waits outside the warehouse and then decides to go in.

There are also 12" extended versions of the "Axel F" theme which were released on the vinyl singles in the 1980s. The 12" version was available as well as side 2 on the Patti LaBelle "New Attitude" 12" dance mix.

Early vinyl copies of the soundtrack included Rick James' "Can't Stop." Later editions replaced the James song with Rockie Robbins' "Emergency."

[edit] Chart positions

Year Chart Position
1985 Billboard 200 1
Preceded by
Around the World in a Day by Prince and the Revolution		 Billboard 200 number-one album
June 22 - July 5, 1985		 Succeeded by
No Jacket Required by Phil Collins

[edit] Sequels

Main articles: Beverly Hills Cop II and Beverly Hills Cop III

The film spawned two sequels, both starring Eddie Murphy, in 1987 and 1994. Judge Reinhold also reprised his role of Billy Rosewood for the sequels. The second and third films were semi-successful in the box office. Faltermeyer's Axel F was used in both sequels.

[edit] Awards and nominations

American Film Institute Lists

[edit] Video games

Main article: Beverly Hills Cop (video game)

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Beverly Hills Cop Production Budget". The-Numbers.com. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1984/0BHC1.php. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  2. ^ "Re-Cast: Five Blockbusters Completely Changed For Their Star". Empire Magazine. http://www.empireonline.com/features/recasting-blockbusters/. Retrieved 2010-11-13. 
  3. ^ "The Greatest Films of 1984". AMC Filmsite.org. http://www.filmsite.org/1984.html. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  4. ^ "The Best Movies of 1984 by Rank". Films101.com. http://www.films101.com/y1984r.htm. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  5. ^ "Best Films of 1984". listal.com. http://www.listal.com/list/best-films-of-1984. Retrieved August 5, 2010. 
  6. ^ "Most Popular Feature Films Released in 1984". IMDb.com. http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=1984,1984&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
  7. ^ "Beverly Hills Cop, Film Review". The New York Times. April 29, 2003. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9E05E1D71438F936A35751C1A962948260. Retrieved May 21, 2010. [dead link]
  8. ^ "Cinema: Eddie Goes to Lotusland". Time. December 10, 1984. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,955391,00.html. Retrieved April 26, 2010. 
  9. ^ "Empire's The 100 Greatest Movie Characters". Empire. http://www.empireonline.com/100-greatest-movie-characters/default.asp?c=78. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  10. ^ "Beverly Hills Cop Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beverly_hills_cop/?page=2&critic=columns&sortby=date&name_order=asc&view=#contentReviews. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  11. ^ "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". The New York Times. April 29, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html. Retrieved April 26, 2010. 
  12. ^ "Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies of All Time". Boston.com. July 25, 2006. http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/bravos_funniest?pg=5. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  13. ^ "Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies"". listsofbests.com. http://www.listsofbests.com/list/7092-100-funniest-movies. Retrieved May 21, 2010. 
  14. ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies Nominees
  15. ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains Nominees
  16. ^ The Movie Game Database

[edit] External links

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