BEVERLY HILLS COP III
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, Hector Elizondo, Timothy Carhart, Theresa Randle, Bronson Pinchot. Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza. Director: John Landis.
It's hard to believe that it's been ten years since the original BEVERLY HILLS COP turned Eddie Murphy into the biggest star in Hollywood, for two very different reasons. On the one hand, it doesn't seem like that long since I saw it in a theater for the first time. On the other hand, it seems like twice that long since Murphy has had a hit. It certainly must seem like an eternity to Murphy; he is proved consistently unable in the last few years to recapture the COP audience without returning to Beverly Hills. So at something of a crossroads in his career, he again dons the Detroit Lions jacket for BEVERLY HILLS COP III. And what a lifeless outing it is--slow, unfunny and lacking even Murphy's cocky charm.
COP III opens back in Detroit, where Axel Foley is in the process of leading a raid on a stolen car chop shop. The raid goes sour when big guns turn out to be on the scene, and in the ensuing battle Axel's boss is killed. The killer's trail, naturally, leads back to California, where Axel enlists the aid of old friend Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and newcomer Det. Flint (Hector Elizondo). Their investigation leads to the WonderWorld amusement park, whose chief of security Ellis DeWald (Timothy Carhart) is behind the dirty dealings. Unfortunately, no one believes Axel except a park technician (Theresa Randle) and WonderWorld patriarch Uncle Dave (Alan Young), leaving Axel more or less alone to figure out what's rotten at WonderWorld.
Give Steven E. de Souza credit for not deciding simply to rehash BEVERLY HILLS COP. COP III is more of a pure action film, which makes it exactly the wrong kind of film for John Landis to direct. Landis' sense of pacing has always been suspect to say the least, tending towards manic spurts interrupted by long, surrealistic comic passages, and that package is on display here. For no apparent reason, Landis interrupts his establishing sequence in the chop shop to bring us a production number featuring two corpulent gentlemen performing "Come See About Me." Later, in the middle of a chase, Axel stops to join a group of costumed characters in a stage show. COP III is filled with decisions like these which bring the film to a grinding halt. Bronson Pinchot's scene-stealing Serge from COP I returns as a personal security-device peddler in a scene which takes far too long to introduce a single plot element. Ditto for the scene in which we sit through an entire park attraction, because we know it's going to show up later. There is no economy to the screenwriting or the direction, and Landis has simply gotten too predictable in his shot selection. In one scene in a restaurant bar, I anticipated the conclusion of the scene two minutes before it happened.
It's also extremely unfortunate that in addition to abandoning the COP I formula, de Souza has also decided to abandon the characters. He seems to have forgotten completely about Billy Rosewood's fascination with big guns from COP II, missing a wonderful opportunity. He also seems to have forgotten that Axel is supposed to be smart; how else to explain running from park security into a ride from which escape is not extremely likely. Perhaps to set up an action sequence. Murphy gets to fire a lot of bullets, but gets painfully few opportunities to show that Axel's greatest weapon is his wits.
Of course, it would have been difficult for any wit to come through when Murphy sleepwalks through his performance. Perhaps he senses what the audience does, that a thirty-something Axel Foley isn't nearly as interesting as a twenty-something Axel Foley. What made COP I click was Murphy as the streetwise loose cannon, aggravating uptight veteran Taggart even while he was teaching him. Now, Axel _is_ the veteran, going about his business methodically and rarely thinking on his feet. There is some good action to be found in BEVERLY HILLS COP III, particularly a rescue on a runaway park ride, and one very funny sequence involving a multi-faceted gun. But there is none of the irreverent edge that made the young Murphy so appealing. Maybe that's what depressed me most about COP III: considering the possibility that we might never see that Eddie Murphy again.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Beverly Hills cops: 3.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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