Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F manages to somewhat redeem the beloved franchise after the cinematic dumpster fire of its immediate predecessor. Eddie Murphy reprises the role of Detroit detective Axel Foley who keeps having reason to bring his distinctive style of mayhem to Beverly Hills. The screenplay was written by Will Beall, Tom Gormican, and Kevin Ettan. Mark Molloy is at the helm as director and at least does this with some competence and care for the series.

John Ashton, Judge Reinhold, Paul Reiser, and Bronson Pinchot are the returning cast members from the previous films. Kevin Bacon, Taylour Paige, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are newer and effective additions to the world.

Axel Foley has managed to somehow stay on the Detroit police force for these past several decades. At some point since he was last seen on screen, he had gotten married, sired a daughter, and divorced. He and his daughter have become estranged in recent years. She has moved out to California and has become a defense attorney. Her latest case has her mired in a deep nest of police corruption and drug trafficking. When she is getting a little closer to proving a client innocent of murdering a police officer, she is threatened rather dramatically. Of course, that isn’t going to set well with the relentless Axel Foley, which brings him back to Beverly Hills, much to the chagrin of his daughter.

Foley manages to catch up with his friends, Chief Taggart and now private investigator, Billy Rosewood. Rosewood has landed into some trouble of his own since he was helping Axel’s daughter and was on the scent of some dirty cops before he disappeared.

Taylour Paige, who plays Foley’s daughter, holds her own alongside the undiminished charisma and talent of Murphy. There were some interesting character moments as the script tries to fill in the background between the estrangement of father and daughter. Although he is still recognizably Alex Foley, there is some evidence of maturity mixed into the familiar brashness.

The script does a good job of evoking the affectionate sense of nostalgia for these characters and showing that they are not frozen in time. Relationships ebb and flow, and circumstances are always changing. It was interesting to get a sense of what Foley would have been like as a father, and he wasn’t that good at it, but the audience can still root for him to be better.

The new cast members seem to be enjoying the experience as well. Murphy still looks somewhat believable in his action sequences, although he isn’t quite as acrobatic as he was in the previous films.

The actual plot is a bit of a mess, but that’s not unusual for this franchise. It’s still better than Beverly Hills Cop III, Overall, it was fun to revisit this world even if I am instinctively suspicious of Hollywood’s insistence on resurrecting these franchises decades later. It’s not a great film, but it’s reasonably entertaining.