Movies News Talk
Beverly Hills Cop 3 saw Axel taking down a counterfeiting ring hidden inside the Disneyland-esque theme park Wonder World. The movie gave Axel his only real love interest in the franchise, with Axel and Wonder World employee Janice (Theresa Randle) having a little romance going. The movie closes with Janice taking Axel to see the "Tunnel of Love," but as Theresa Randle's absence from Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F's cast shows, nothing came of this romance.
Theresa Randle was also missing from another 2024 action-comedy sequel, with her recurring role as Theresa in Bad Boys: Ride or Die being recast with Tasha Smith. Janice is neither seen nor mentioned in the Netflix Sequel. Presumably, any potential relationship between Axel and Janice was cut short when Axel went back to Detroit. Any working theories that Janice is the mother of Jane are also incorrect since Jane was born before the events of Beverly Hills Cop 3.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F largely centers around the difficult relationship between Axel and Jane. Axel reveals he sent Jane and her mother away from Detroit when the 12th Street Mafia threatened to come after them to hurt him. Fearing for their safety, he got them out of the city, but given Axel's addiction to the job, didn't leave with them. Jane is understandably upset about this, which is one reason they stopped speaking.
Axel F also reveals Jane is 32 years old, placing her birth about two years before Beverly Hills Cop 3. The fourth outing is vague on the timeline, but it appears Axel was a big part of Jane's life during her early years, and was still married to her mother. However, his romance with Janice during the third film implies he wasn't married at the time, and may have already sent Jane and her mother away. Either that or he was just being unfaithful, though that feels out of character on Axel's part.
Given the relative lack of romance in the Beverly Hills Cop saga, the reveal Axel was once married with a child is a big deal. Axel F doesn't treat it as such, revealing next to nothing about Axel's ex-wife, aside from her surname, Saunders. Axel does imply that Jane's mother has a fierce personality and she divorced him shortly after the Detroit exile. Reading between the lines, it seems the divorce was due to Axel not coming with them and putting his job first.
An angry boss is a staple of the cop movie genre, where a given action film's renegade detective is chewed out for creating havoc. The Beverly Hills Cop series had a standout angry boss in Inspector Todd, played by real-life Detroit police officer Gil Hill. Todd was gunned down during Beverly Hills Cop 3's opening shootout, which prompted Axel to head to Beverly Hills to seek his killer. Axel F reveals Axel's dweeby former partner Jeffrey (Paul Reiser) has since taken Todd's place as his boss.
Despite his performance as Todd being well-received, Gil Hill never acted outside of his Beverly Hills Cop appearances. Jeffrey doesn't so much chew Axel out for the destructive snow plow chase that opens Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F then warns him he can no longer pull such stunts. In fact, Jeffrey sacrifices his job to save Axel's, as he's worried Axel would have no life if he was fired from the force.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F features the return of several fan favorites, including Judge Reinhold's Billy Rosewood. Billy evolved from meek rookie to an adrenaline junkie across the first three movies. Despite being a big cheese within the Beverly Hills Police Department in part three, he's fallen from favor in the decades since. The Sequel reveals Billy became disillusioned with the force following a clash with Kevin Bacon's Captain Grant, and retired from the police in protest.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F's soundtrack leans hard on nostalgia with retro songs from the franchise's past, with a couple of modern tracks thrown in. In the aftermath, he became a private detective. One of Billy's investigations kicks the events of Axel F into gear, and his disappearance brings Axel and Jane together to find him. Naturally, his case ties into the one the Foleys are looking into.
One of the most disastrous decisions Beverly Hills Cop 3 made was dropping John Ashton's Taggart, Billy's gruff partner. Ashton shared great chemistry with Murphy and Reinhold in the first two movies, and was a low-key scene-stealer. Billy explained in Beverly Hills Cop 3 that Taggart had retired, but in Axel F, he has become the city's new Chief of Police.
Taggart further explains to Axel that he unretired due to reuniting with his wife Maureen, so he had a desire to spend less time at home. Becoming Chief makes sense for Taggart, considering his many years of experience, though he naturally gets back in the action in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F's explosive ending shootout.
Given how long they were partners, it's a shocker to hear Billy and Taggart are estranged in Axel F. They split due to Taggart backing Bacon's villain Grant in a previous case, involving the latter dropping a drugs charges against cartel members Billy had arrested. Grant was a former protege of Taggart's, who refused to believe Billy's claims he was corrupt. Hurt over his former partner's decision, Billy quit but began looking into Grant's activities in his own time.
Jane has the same strength and determination as her father, even if they're not that close. She works as a criminal defense attorney in Beverly Hills, which doesn't make her popular with the police. After working on a case for Billy, she's targeted by Grant's men. This is partly what brings Axel back to the city, and they clash over her choice of profession - defending criminals - which feels like a slight against his career.
The relationship between Axel and Jane is essentially rock bottom when Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F starts. They hadn't seen or spoken in five years, and Axel had to be pushed by Jeffrey and Billy to talk to his daughter. In general, the sequel's story revolves around Axel coming to grips with his age and thinking of a life outside the job. For her part, Jane can't forgive how absent Axel was from her life and how he chose Detroit over her.
By the end of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the two have reconciled and it looks like Axel will be visiting more often. Murphy has already stated that a possible Beverly Hills Cop 5 is in the works, so his reconnection with Jane is the perfect excuse to bring him back to the city for more misadventures.