Every week, movie expert Alan Sarkissian delves deeper into a classic "concept movie" that has baffled and delighted both critic and movie goer alike, and gives the definitive word on what it really all means. Debate has raged for years over these cryptic, metaphysical movies - but there's a new sheriff in town, and he's here to clear something up...what these movies are actually about.
This week: The Real Meaning of Beverly Hills Cop
Alan: Ok, ok, I’ve been reading all these different theories about what Beverly Hills Cop really meant, and I kinda think that some of you have understood parts of it, and some of you guys are just way wide of the mark (sorry!) Anyway, I know it’s hard to believe, but I think I’ve finally solved the riddle.
SPOILERS: Ok, so this is how I see it: At the start of the movie we meet Axel Foley, a wisecracking, street-smart Detroit cop. Stop and take a look at that name: Axel Foley. The Axel clearly representing the turning of wheels of industry, Foley sounding a lot like Folly. What do you get? Foolish Industry - a title, I’m sure you’d agree, which would have worked just as well as Beverly Hills Cop.
The very first time we see him, he’s in the back of a cigarette truck, doing an undercover deal with a couple of criminals. One of them gets a little suspicious and thinks Axel might be a cop. Axel vehemently denies this, turning it round on the guy, implying he might be a cop. This is Axel rejecting his own identity, and throwing out the ultimate riddle of the law: we resent it but we all rely on it, or at least might do.
Later, a high-speed chase ensues with Axel hanging on for dear life at the back (foreshadowing his fight for justice in Beverly Hills), while cigarettes fall out and litter the streets. This is a visual reference to his journey to LA, the city of Hollywood which represents glamour, so often personified by a sultrily smoked cigarette.
In the film’s first vital scene, Axel runs into his old friend Michael Tandino, an old buddy from way back when, who now works for an art dealer in LA. Tandino symbolically wears a Hawaii style tropical shirt, representing the escapism of his new life and LA itself, which is clearly tarnished when he is shot by bad guys, the red blood seeping through and reminding us all that heaven and hell are not so far apart, dreams and nightmares both occupiers of the same space.
Determined to solve the case and avenge his friend, Foley takes immediate leave and heads off to Beverly Hills to find out more about his friend’s life and why people were chasing him for money. As he arrives, there is a montage of shots – palm trees, attractive, suntanned blondes, expensive boutiques and so on, which Axel seems to look at appreciatively.
But look again – in those eyes is a lot of pain. Axel feels the pain of a black man enslaved by white America for years, and continuing to be, albeit in more subtle ways. Beverly Hills, he seems to be saying, is a world into which he is not invited – nor would ever want to be. His trademark laugh is as hollow as the exhaust pipe of the car he will later stick a banana up (Yes! A banana! The most racially sensitive and political of all fruits, which he symbolically places up the exhaust pipe of white America).
His first port of call is an art gallery, run by ice cold Brit Jonathan Maitland. Some people seem to think that him being an art dealer is just a generic way of having an unlikely bad guy who can do a lot of importing and exporting without the police asking too many questions. You’re so naive! Just think about it for a minute! The bad guy is an art dealer. Who was a famous artist? That’s right, Van Gogh! And what did he do? He cut off his ear! This clearly symbolises how Axel refuses to hear the truth – that life is all a semi-conscious dream unto which we fade in and out, and LA, as the second biggest US city after New York – known as The City of Dreams, represents its (second) deepest slumber.
Taggart and Rosewood as two idiot savant cops assigned to making sure Foley does not overstep his boundaries are clearly there to represent the concept of the id in Freudian psychology.
Bogermill, however, is obviously a more old world religious figure, suggesting the theological difficulties of the passing of the belief in the Divine Right of Kings.
When Foley interrupts Maitland at his country club, a stooge steps in and Axel knocks him into some food. Again, the racial motif: You have stolen food from my forefather’s mouths, he seems to be saying, now here, have it over the back of your blazer.
The ultimate showdown between the two ties together all these metaphysical loose ends in one uniting moment – when Axel finally gets to murder Maitland, his blood and guts splattering all over the wall. That scene rocks!!!!!!!
Phew, having solved that labyrinthine plot, I’m off to get a drink, before I turn my attention to another one that’s bugged me (and countless others) for years – Stakeout.
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