Rating of
3/4
Beverly Hills Cop
SmokeScreener - wrote on 04/15/09
"Beverly Hills Cop" is an action comedy that still holds up. Eddie Murphy is at his best when he is forced to improvise in difficult situations. Murphy's irreverent "bad cop" is nicely balanced by the "good cops" in Beverly Hills, especially John Ashton and Judge Reinhold. Steven Berkoff plays the icy drug smuggler, and is also a nice foil for Murphy. The weak link seems to be Lisa Eilbacher, who turns in a limp performance as a character whose only role seems to be to get Murphy access to the smuggler's warehouse.
The film earned a SmokeScreeners Rating of 4 Butts for smoking content (http://tinyurl.com/cwslf9), due mostly to an early scene in which Murphy setds up a sting operation using black market cigarettes. It looks like plenty of product placement money was spread around in this scene, as the truck is full of Pall Mall and Lucky Strike cases. Surprisingly, only one of the films stars is seen smoking (Lisa Eilbacher); the rest of the smoking consists of background extras in Detroit.
