Beverly Hills Cop (1984) review

Chaos-inducing Detroit detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) gets knocked out and wakes up to find his friend Mikey (James Russo) from Beverly Hills has been executed, so he takes a "vacation" to California to investigate and targets art dealer Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff) ... which annoys both Victor and the entirety of the uppity police force (Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Ronny Cox, etc.).  There have been plenty of fish-out-of-water and buddy cop movies made prior to this, but Brest, Murphy and the rest of the cast - working off a script by Daniel Petrie Jr. - make it seem fresh and new: it's a popcorn movie (that often strains plausibility) with a great soundtrack (by Harold Faltermeyer, who wasn't so lucky with Fletch) that moves very quickly and has proven to be influential in similar projects that followed it.  Even the ending works - the "by the books" Cali police learn to "twist the truth" because sometimes ... sometimes, a little white lie doesn't hurt so much.  Despite being a box office smash, it's been critically polarizing, too: Pauline Kael and John Simon loathed it, but Kingsley Amis loved it (it must have been the martinis).