Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley encountered some wild villains during his Beverly Hills Cop misadventures, but some way rank higher than others. The Beverly Hills Cop movies are basically Eddie Murphy showing off his movie star prowess, with the original 1984 film only cementing his growing fame. Murphy also hated the Beverly Hills Cop sequels (though his stance on the second film has softened greatly) so much it took him 30 years to work up the enthusiasm for a fourth outing.
While Netflix’s belated Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F was far from flawless, it underlined that Murphy’s star power remains intact. Time will tell if Beverly Hills Cop 5 will happen, but given the positive response to part four, there’s a good possibility. Murphy’s Axel is so overpowering in the films that the villains often fail to register, which has been a problem. In short, most of his antagonists have been a bit lame, with only a handful truly registering as worthy foes.
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10 Charles Cain (Dean Stockwell)
Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)
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Beverly Hills Cop 2 was an early Tony Scott movie and contains all the pleasures that may imply. It looks gorgeous, the action is slick and it’s littered with a great cast. One of the joys of the sequel is that it’s an excuse for Foley, Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy (Judge Reinhold) to hang out together while working on the case. It’s doubtful anyone rewatches Beverly Hills Cop 2 to engage with the plot, which is too convoluted and has more villains than it needs, with Dean Stockwell’s Cain being a good case in point.
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The late Stockwell was a terrific actor, but with Cain, he is given almost nothing to do in the film. Cain manages a gun club that is also a staging area for a series of robberies. While the true villain is setting him up for a fall, Cain still approves of the use of custom ammo from his club for the crimes. This is a truly dumb move on his part, and he also sends incompetent hitmen to kill Axel around the midway point. He’s later gunned down during a heist, having made little impression on the story.
9 Orrin Sanderson (John Saxon)
Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994)
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Beverly Hills Cop 3 is the worst of the series by a decent margin. Director John Landis (Coming to America) was completely wrong for the material, while Murphy disastrously insisted on dialing back the humor to make himself more of a dramatic lead. This results in a shaggy Die Hard ripoff set in a theme park, where the villains are making counterfeit money. Legendary genre actor John Saxon plays Sanderson, the manager of the Wonder World theme park who, like Stockwell before him, is utterly wasted.
Sanderson is a stock villain role through and through, and his character is never once threatening – even when ordering people murdered. Sanderson is ignobly killed by an offscreen villain in what is meant to be a twist but instead feels like his sole purpose in Beverly Hills Cop 3’s plot.
8 Ellis DeWald (Timothy Carhart)
Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994)
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DeWald is Beverly Hills Cop 3’s true antagonist, being a sleazy ex-cop turned head of security at Wonder World. When Eddie Murphy was reflecting on the reasons the third film failed, he specifically cited DeWald being a weak villain as a problem. Now, the character has a strong introduction, where he and his men ruthlessly gun down the crew of a chop shop to cover their tracks, before also killing Axel’s gruff boss Todd (Gil Hill).
Carhart is a performer who works well with villainous supporting roles, but despite making DeWald agreeably smarmy and unlikable, there’s never any doubt Axel will win.
Despite this strong first impression, DeWald becomes less and less threatening as the story unfolds. Despite talking a big game, his schemes always come to nothing, such as his failed attempt to kill Wonder World founder Uncle Dave (Alan Young). Carhart is a performer who works well with villainous supporting roles, but despite making DeWald agreeably smarmy and unlikable, there’s never any doubt Axel will win.
7 Steve Fulbright (Stephen McHattie)
Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994)
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Beverly Hills Cop 3 secret villain is Secret Service agent Fulbright, played by famed character actor Stephen McHattie. Fulbright is presented as the gruff but sympathetic agent investigating the counterfeit operation at Wonder World. McHattie may have played plenty of bad guy roles throughout his career, but he does a good job of masking Fulbright’s allegiances, and he and Murphy share some of the better dramatic scenes of the sequel.
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When Beverly Hills Cop 3’s ending finally reveals Fulbright is part of the operation with Sanderson and DeWald, it comes too late. Axel has already killed the others and audiences are ready for the story to wrap up, so this reveal – which immediately results in Foley gunning Fulbright down – carries little weight. McHattie comes out on top as the third film’s villain by sheer virtue of his intense screen presence, but Fulbright is not a memorable character by any means.
6 Maxwell Dent (Jürgen Prochnow)
Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)
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German actor Jürgen Prochnow rose to fame thanks to Das Boot and became a reliable rent-a-villain for American movies in the decades that followed. He’s an actor with tremendous presence, but as Beverly Hills Cop 2’s head villain Dent, Prochnow is made into a dull cipher. Dent is a businessman pulling off a series of heists to pull himself out of debt, but leaves the hard work to his subordinates.
… Dent talks a big game, but he poses no actual threat to Axel and is easily dispatched in the sequel’s finale.
He’s the puppet master of a scheme that takes two or three rewatches of Beverly Hills Cop 2 to fully comprehend. Like DeWald, Dent also talks a big game, but he poses no actual threat to Axel and is easily dispatched in the sequel’s finale with a well-placed shot to the head. It’s a shame, since Prochnow showed with his roles in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness or Judge Dredd that he can have fun with a juicy villain role.
5 Captain Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon)
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
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Easily the most famous face to play a Beverly Hills Cop antagonist is Kevin Bacon, who plays a corrupt cop in the fourth outing, Axel F. Bacon brings a lot of charm (and smarm) to the role of Captain Grant. Grant is almost like an evil version of Axel, representing who Murphy’s detective could have become under the wrong circumstances. Again, the problem is that Grant is just too flimsy a threat.
Murphy and Bacon have good chemistry and have multiple scenes where they butt heads, but the menace is never really there. If anything, Grant comes off as largely incompetent, making his defeat a foregone conclusion. This is more a fault of the screenplay than the actor, who is having scenery-chewing fun. Grant falls short of being at a top-tier level though, since he’s almost too glib about his villainy.
4 Zack (Jonathan Banks)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
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Jonathan Banks was one of those faces that audiences recognized from countless films, but never quite knew his name. That changed when he was cast as hitman with a conscience Mike on Breaking Bad, which let him be a badass and a three-dimensional character. Banks also played the enforcer Zack in the original Beverly Hills Cop, who murders Axel’s best friend Mikey (James Russo) in the opening scenes. In a way, Zack is responsible for the whole saga, as Mikey’s murder sends Axel to Beverly Hills in the first place.
Jonathan Banks also had a small role in Eddie Murphy’s debut movie
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Zack and Axel later come to blows, but Banks is never more menacing than in the scene where he kills Mikey. It’s a shocking dark scene for a relatively light action-comedy, but there is little doubt Zack is a ruthless killer. Zack is one of the few characters in the Beverly Hills Cop series who truly feels like he could kill Axel, which puts him above many other villains in the series.
3 Chief Harold Lutz (Allen Garfield)
Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)
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Chief Lutz is the Chief of Police in Beverly Hills Cop 2 but despite now actually being involved in criminal activity, he is one of the most unpleasant villains of the series. Cop movies from the 1980s are famous for their angry Chiefs, but Lutz is the most demonic version imaginable. He’s constantly angry and abusive to his men and is an ego-driven career opportunist. He’s one of the biggest roadblocks for Axel, Billy and Taggart looking into the Alphabet case, but has little issue sweeping in and taking credit for their findings.
He was also fond of firing officers who disagreed with his abrasive approach, but his horrid attitude ultimately got him fired. Once the Mayor witnessed the full extent of Lutz’s failings, he was promptly dismissed from his position. Even if not technically a criminal, Lutz is one of Beverly Hills Cop’s most detestable jerks.
2 Victor Maitland (Steven Berkoff)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
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Steven Berkoff was another reliable villain throughout the 1980s, playing evil Russians in James Bond adventure Octopussy or Rambo: First Blood Part II. Berkoff’s Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop is one of his most famous roles, with the actor being a delightful ham as the evil art gallery owner Axel has to take down. Maitland doesn’t even try to hide his guilt, with the subtext of a wealthy white businessman rolling his eyes at the thought of a Black officer from Detroit bringing him down carries some interesting subtext.
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Maitland is a sinister figure because he believes his status protects him from consequence – and he’s largely correct. Axel refuses to let him get away with Mikey’s death though, with the showdown between Axel and Maitland being an intense one. Axel and Captain Bogomil (Ronny Cox) wind up taking him down together, in the true spirit of cooperation between police departments, as they riddle Maitland with bullets.
1 Karla Fry (Brigette Nielsen)
Beverly Hills Cop 2 (1987)
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Odds are that if audiences remember any one villain from the franchise, it would be Beverly Hills Cop 2’s Karla, played by Brigette Nielsen. Karla is Dent’s right hand woman and lover and leads the heists that kick the story into motion. In truth, picking a statuesque blond lady would only point the finger further at Dent, but the sequel overlooks this detail. Nielsen had a run of hits during this time like Rocky IV and Cobra, but Beverly Hills Cop 2 offered the former model her most famous role.
Karla is a fun threat for Axel and co but also looks more than credible wielding gigantic handguns.
Karla is a role tailored to Nielsen’s talents, with director Scott making great use of her imposing height and fashion sense. Karla is a fun threat for Axel and co but also looks more than credible wielding gigantic handguns. She also totally outshines more veteran performers like Stockwell and Prochnow, and she makes sense as Axel’s final adversary during Beverly Hills Cop 2’s climax.
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop is an action-comedy movie franchise that stars Eddie Murphy as a Detroit cop named Axel Foley who heads to Beverly Hills, California, to investigate the death of his best friend. Foley, a street-smart and intense officer, is constantly observed and (sometimes) reigned in with the help of Billy Rosewood and John Taggart, two other detectives from his department.
Movie(s) Beverly Hills Cop , Beverly Hills Cop 2 , Beverly Hills Cop 3 , Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Created by Danilo Bach , Daniel Petrie, Jr. Upcoming Films Beverly Hills Cop 5 Cast Eddie Murphy , Judge Reinhold , John Ashton , Jurgen Prochnow , Brigitte Nielsen , Hector Elizondo , Allen Garfield Where to watch Amazon Prime Video Character(s) Axel Foley , Billy Rosewood , John Taggart , Harold Lutz , Maxwell Dent , Karla Fry , Jon Flint
Summary
Beverly Hills Cop is an action-comedy movie franchise that stars Eddie Murphy as a Detroit cop named Axel Foley who heads to Beverly Hills, California, to investigate the death of his best friend. Foley, a street-smart and intense officer, is constantly observed and (sometimes) reigned in with the help of Billy Rosewood and John Taggart, two other detectives from his department.
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