DVD Reviews

Beverly Hills Cop (Blu-Ray)

Beverly Hills Cop is an absolute classic action-comedy. After 48 Hours it was pretty obvious Eddie Murphy would be back doing another police comedy of some kind and Beverly Hills Cop is exactly what his career needed.  Combining action, comedy, mystery and the buddy cop genre all into a well told, fun filled story is what makes Beverly Hills Cop a favourite of many even to this day and I’m happy to say, it has aged quite well.

The heat is on in this fast-paced action-comedy starring Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, a street-smart Detroit cop tracking down his best friend’s killer in Beverly Hills. Axel quickly learns his wild style doesn’t fit in with the Beverly Hills Police Department, which assigns two officers to make sure things don’t get out of hand. Dragging the stuffy detectives along for the ride, Axel smashes through a huge culture clash in his hilarious, high-speed pursuit of justice.

On first listen, the DTS-HD 5.1 MA lossless soundtrack may not seem that great but after you dig a little deeper, you learn that much of what may seems like flaws at first, were actually intentional according to the filmmakers. The first big problem you might notice as it arises quite early in the film is the lack of deep low end impact especially where action sequences are concerned. During a big chase scene where a tractor trailer is smashing through cars left right and center, we don’t receive the power and explosiveness we’ve become used to in modern films. In fact, the crashes almost seem non-existent as you can hardly hear them. This is often due to being drowned out by the music. This was intentional (as the filmmakers have mentioned) as they used the music to drive and pump up their action sequences. Why else would we remember such great tracks as “Neutron Dance” by Pointer Sisters, “New Attitude” by Patti LaBelle, “The Heat is On” by Glenn Frey and of course, “Axel F” by Harold Faltermeyer? Unfortunately, while the music is such an important part of the film, whether due to the source material or poor mixing, the songs are sometimes a little muted and lacking action or power. Add the fact that the surrounds aren’t used much at all (even when it comes to the music which was supposed to be a key feature of the film), and I don’t get the feeling that the audio was given the attention it deserves. Dialogue, however, is always clean, crisp and clear so you’ll never have to worry about missing a single piece of Eddie Murphy’s witty dialogue. Audio is also available in Portuguese and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks as well as a French DD 2.0 track. Subtitles are available in English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Video is presented in 1080p at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. It, much like the audio, falls short of what I have come to expect from Blu-ray. While colours are beautifully reproduced, black levels are strong and inky and I could find no presence of edge enhancement, bleeding or compression artifacts, the film is lacking the detail Blu-ray should have. Granted, this is an older film so detail is often a little less but with this release of Beverly Hills Cop, the levels of detail aren’t consistent throughout the entire film. There is a level of noticeable grain throughout which is for the most part consistent so it is never distracting though it does tend to be a bit more noticeable in dimly lit scenes. While this can be forgiven considering the rest of the quality of the transfer, it doesn’t help the already hampered detail levels. Considering the age of the film, I’d say this is a very good transfer but not great.

In the extras department is a full length screen-specific audio commentary with Director Martin Brest. I wish I could say that this was a fantastic commentary full of interesting tidbits but in reality, Brest only adds a little bit of information not contained in other extras on the disc and he has a tendency to leave long pauses where he’s busy watching the movie rather than talk about it. There’s a half hour long featurette entitled “Beverly Hills Cop – The Phenomenon Begins” which involves all the principals involved in the film and is quite informative. If you didn’t know anything about BHC you’d leave knowing most everything and even those who think they know a lot about the film should leave knowing more than they did before they watched it.  Much of the featurette deals with the casting and the story and since you have the entire cast involved, you get to learn a lot. There are a couple other featurettes as well. “A Glimpse into the Casting Process” seemed almost pointless since a good portion of what was mentioned in this short piece was already covered in the previous featurette. “The Music of Beverly Hills Cop” isn’t very long either but I was pleased to learn a few things about how the songs in the film came about being used.  “Location Map” is an interesting change in what essentially is just interview footage with Angelo Graham. What makes the piece even worth looking at is the fact that they’ve broken it into each specific location by using an interactive map that shows roughly where each location is in California in relation to each other. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly go into much detail about any one of the 7 locations as the entire footage runs less than 10 minutes in length and some of the location specific stuff lasts only few seconds at best. The final extra is the film’s theatrical trailer which is presented in HD. Owners of the previous 2001 release of the film will notice a lot of similarity here and since only the trailer has really had an HD upgrade, they’ll have to settle for being happy that nothing from the previous release was left out.

This Blu-ray release of Beverly Hills Cop is a must own for anyone who doesn’t already have a copy of the film. It is the best release currently available of a fantastic action-comedy. Whether you believe the “flaws” in the audio were intentional as the filmmakers have suggested or if you think someone is  just covering up some poor work, the film still stands as a fun filled comedy cop flick. If you already own the previous DVD of the film, the fact that most the extras included on this release have just been ported over doesn’t provide much incentive to upgrade. However, if you are a die hard fan of the film, the better audio and video presented here might be worth it for you. Of course, if you happen to find the release in a discount bin somewhere, I would highly recommend the upgrade.

Review By Rob Harding