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Netflix Movie Review: Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

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The 4th installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise – “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” is not about movie making as much as it is about risk aversion. Producers are always afraid of losing money, or at the very least recouping their investment. Movie-making has always been a very risky business.

The 3rd Beverly Hills Cop movie in the franchise “Beverly Hills Cop III” was a big failure when it was released in 1994. The producers of this 4th film were clearly afraid of another bomb, so decisions were made before this movie was finally greenlighted, after 30 years since the last film.

The first idea was to make the movie streaming with Netflix, to avoid the huge distribution costs. Unfortunately, the next idea was to provide way too many small reminders of the first two movies, throughout this 4th installment. This included having the same music from the original film – especially during some of the chase scenes. Eddie Murphy, as Axel Foley is once again driving a huge truck during a chase scene as he did in each of the first two movies. The same mansion that was used in the shoot-out conclusion of the first movie was once again in this film. The same huge large-scale truck area used at the end of the second movie was used again in this one. Foley’s decision to move to Beverly Hills based on a crime originating in Detroit happens again in this film. It seemed that any thoughts of originality for this 4th film were thrown out in favor of fear of losing money from producing another bad movie. The producers thought they had a better chance of success if they just repeated what worked in the first two movies.

As far as the acting, it was OK, but Eddie Murphy was not nearly as funny as he was in the first two films, another major problem with this 4th movie in the franchise. The comedy part of these films are the main reasons why the first film was such a big hit 40 years ago. Judge Reinhold returns as Billy Rosewood, John Ashton as Officer Taggart, Paul Reiser as Jeffrey Freidman, and Bronson Pinchot as Serge, who was also not nearly as funny as he was in the first film. The two new additions are Kevin Bacon as a corrupt police captain and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective Bobby Abbott. The entire story was very run of the mill, with the addition of Axel Foley’s estranged daughter played by Taylour Paige. Unfortunately there is nothing new in this plot that we have seen many times before in so many police dramas, with the expected shoot out at the end – in the same exact house as the first movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a correct 65% and unfortunately, just like Murphy’s last sequel, “Coming to America 2”, released on Netflix in 2021, this attempt to awaken another movie franchise has failed. I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1

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In one of the most risky and ambitious movie productions of all time, the first of four movies about the American West during the time of the Civil War, “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” has been released and unfortunately, the critical reviews of only 40% are correct.

This film reminded me of the game Whac-A-Mole, with new characters, storylines, and scenes out of nowhere popping in and out of this 3-hour movie, with no setup, explanation, and total disregard for the art of storytelling. What is going on now? Who is this person? Does anybody have a name? Is this new scene related to other parts of this story?

The weekend box office for the first installment of this Horizon series was a low 11 million dollars. One of the reasons for this low turnout is the poor critical reviews. The other reason is, that fewer people are willing to sit for 3 hours to see any kind of movie, much less one that is getting bad reviews. Regardless, there is no necessity for this first Horizon movie to be 3 hours and 1 minute long. With so many disconnected stories, one-third of them could have been cut. With the second installment coming out in August, the excess could have been moved to the next film.

The odds are extremely high that the second movie will probably have more or less the same reviews, although hopefully, the next film is not another 3 hours. Considering the huge investment involved with producing four films over two years, you have to wonder if they even bothered to have test audiences for the first movie, to get their opinions before taking such a huge risk and making more movies. I also wondered what the people in the audience of the Cannes Film Festival some weeks ago were thinking when they gave Costner an 11-minute standing ovation. This movie is nowhere near worthy of a standing ovation, much less one that is 11 minutes long.

Kevin Costner wrote the screenplay with 2 other screenwriters, which might partially explain the way too many disconnected stories and scenes. It’s almost as if none of the screenwriters bothered to collaborate with the other writers. There are about 10 different standalone sub-stories in this screenplay.

The good points about this film are the solid acting, and the well-shot vistas of the American West, with the underlying story about how extremely difficult it was to be alive in the United States during this period in history. Sienna Miller and Jena Malone are very good in their roles as long-suffering women living during this time. Kevin Costner plays the lead role of Hayes Ellison in this story, however, he does not make his first appearance until 1 hour into this movie – another decision that made no sense.

In my opinion, there have been 3 great Westerns in the last 30+ years. The best is Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven”, released in 1992. Second is Costner’s “Dances with Wolves”, released in 1990, and “Open Range”, released in 2003. It is a shame, despite Costner’s extreme enthusiasm for this Horizon idea, which has been ongoing for over 30 years, that this first film of four was not written as well as his last two Westerns.

I agree with the low ratings of 40% for this film and cannot recommend it.

Movie Review: Daddio

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The first rule of screenwriting has always been, “show, do not tell”. Less dialogue is always better in a screenplay. Subtext and visual descriptions are better. A screenplay is not a novel, it is mostly a series of visual directions that depict a story. There are exceptions to rule, including the 3 Ethan Hawk movies, “Before Sunrise”, “Before Midnight” and “Before Sunset” that were released from 1995 – 2013, and consisted of almost 100% dialogue. Making a movie like this is risky, because the conversation has to be compelling enough to hold an audience attention for 2 hours, this can be very hard or at times impossible to accomplish.

For the new movie “Daddio”, starring Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson is a 1 hour 41 minute conversation between a cab driver Clark, played by Penn and a passenger named Girlie, played by Johnson from JFK airport to her home in Brooklyn. There were moments of interesting conversation, and other moments where it was hard to stay engaged with what was being said. Some of the language was too much on the disgusting side, mostly unnecessary considing the majority of the conversations. Too much usage of the F word, is once again still something to always expect in too many movies.

Overall, I thought the acting was good, and perhaps a solid comeback for Johnson after her horendous recent Madame Web movie some months ago. It took courage for both Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson to agree to act in this movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews are 79% with the audience rating a very low 50%. There is not much to recommend here, other than for the most loyal Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson fans.