Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)

Very well executed

Good start, but then it gets ruined

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Everyone knows Eddie Murphy and knows his first two BH films. Everyone knows Steven Segal or should know many of his films if you're a martial arts fanatic. Segal isn't a trained actor, not like any of these films, yet I can name a couple movies he did like Half Past Dead for example where the action and the storyline was more interesting than this flop.Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2 were solid in wise ass comedy and action packed to the mill. This one had plenty of solid action, a few unreal moments but not overly done throughout the film, but it lacked the luster of the other films.The stage direction given to the film and the actors were total crap. Theresa Rhandle is a damn good actress. She proved that in Bad Boys I & II, but what she had to work with in her character here didn't pan out. It seemed more forced for her to be in the film other than being an attractive amusement park ride operator and public relations employee with the hots for Foley.Hector Elizondo's role, Detective Flint - for a guy who been on the force for over 2 decades and a personal friend to Ellis DeWald, there should have been certainly a real struggle there. Flint was put in to play a stronger character with an internal debate, but the writers and Elizondo didn't get the job done. I would wrote a few more scenes there between DeWald and Elizondo to make it more complicated too.DeWald, Tim Carhart, had a decent presence as the bad guy, but he looked more like a con man and less like a psychotic killer. More ruthlessness would have been recommended. He needed to show more of a betrayal between him & his partners, Uncle Dave, & Flint and it wasn't there. Not much depth there.Eddie Murphy's girly laugh belongs more in The Nutty Professor. I'm sure he knew that, but they still had him act like a silly childish man when he confronts DeWald at the Private Security Awards Banquet. That was plain buffoon and wasn't necessary. He would have been better acting like a hysterical S.O.B. as he did when he confronted Dent in BHII.

This instalment opens in Detroit with Axel preparing to raid a local chop-shop; he hasn't bothered getting SWAT support as the group is known not to use weapons… unfortunately just before Axel's raid takes place another group of criminals has turned up and killed everybody in the chop-shop to retrieve a van that we later learn contained the paper used to make $50 bills. Instead of unarmed men the police find themselves up against machinegun toting heavies. Foley's boss, Inspector Todd is killed and Axel is determined to find the man who did it. Not surprisingly what little evidence there is points to Los Angeles; this time to a theme park, Wonderworld, where the head of security is the man who killed Todd… unfortunately Axel will have a hard job proving it as he is a pillar of the local community. Once in LA Axel is reunited with Det. Sgt Billy' Rosewood and also meets Serge again, the art gallery he worked in has closed and now he is selling 'luxury' firearms. When Axel goes into Wonderworld he discovers what is going on but he will have a hard job proving it.It this wasn't a 'Beverly Hills Cop' movie it would probably have been long forgotten; it isn't terrible but it is the weakest of the three films and too often it is silly rather than funny. Some of the gags feel as they wouldn't be out of place in a children's film… unfortunately the swearing and violence means that children shouldn't be watching this. The central story is solid enough but the execution is disappointing; much of the time it seemed as though the creators wanted shoehorn in as many park rides into the film just because they could. Eddie Murphy is good enough as Axel but is no longer as sharp as he was in the original and Judge Reinhold is fun as Billy; other main actors have left the franchise… perhaps wisely. On the plus side there are some good moments and enough laughs; just not as many as one might hope for. Overall one for the completists or those like me who found the box set in the bargain bin and bought it for the first film.

Axle Foley (Eddie Murphy) is in charge of a car theft ring take down but doesn't call in SWAT. They confront some heavily armed killers who just massacred the crew. His beloved boss Inspector Todd (Gilbert R. Hill) is killed. Secret service agent Steve Fulbright (Stephen McHattie) stops him from catching the bad guy. Some evidences point to Wonder World in LA owned by Uncle Dave Thornton (Alan Young). Axel goes out to California to reunite with Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) who has a new partner in Jon Flint (Héctor Elizondo). Axel gets into a shootout at Wonder World and even rescues a couple of kids. Ellis De Wald (Timothy Carhart) is the head of park security who Axle immediately recognizes as the man who killed Todd. Flint is a fan of De Wald and doesn't believe Axel. Uncle Dave tells Axel about some suspicious things and Janice (Theresa Randle) tries to help him.The story is pretty stupid and the amusement park setting is really silly. I guess it's suppose to be subversive somehow. Instead, it just diminishes the movie's edginess and realism. It makes everything look cheesy especially with George Lucas making a cameo. Bronson Pinchot's Serge makes one of the strangest career change ever and it adds even more to the cheese factor. Eddie Murphy is still the same charismatic guy and it's nice to have Judge Reinhold back. However this one misses John Ashton and Ronny Cox. It also misses some sense of realistic action.

A sequel to "Beverly Hills Cop" is tricky. Our hero is always 2,000 miles away from the title setting, and it takes a suspicious death to get him out to the coast. And they were pushing it with the second movie. But here's a movie with a completely different (and awkward) tone from the first two films. "III" feels surprisingly more family-friendly (despite the F-bombs) with Eddie Murphy running amok in a faux- Disneyland theme park. There's lots of shooting and profanity, but none of the edge this series is known for. Not only that, but Murphy (despite getting to play superhero while saving some kids from a park ride) seems oddly listless this time around. It's hard not to laugh at least once during an Eddie movie, but I don't think I did once, here. It's an array of jokes that fall flat. It's not just that "Beverly Hills Cop III" is lifeless, but it's a bad Eddie Murphy movie, a bad John Landis movie, and everything that's supposed to be funny . . . isn't.4/10