Three decades after the pretty awful third instalment of the series, Eddie Murphy returned to his most famous role for a fourth one – and while it got a mixed reception, I enjoyed it. Films described as “action comedy” rarely do the comedy particularly well, but this film prompted me to go back to the original Beverly Hills Cop which is one of the best of the genre and while clearly Axel F isn’t as good as that one (or its first sequel), it’s entertaining and great to see Murphy on good form. Harold Faltermeyer’s main theme for the first film is one of the most iconic keyboard themes any film’s ever had and Lorne Balfe (who also worked with Faltermeyer material on Top Gun: Maverick) not surprisingly nods his head to it in his score for this new instalment, opening the album with a straight 2024 reworking of the whole theme and dotting elements from it in throughout.

Nile Rodgers tried to do much bigger action variants on that theme for BHC3 back in 1994 and that didn’t really work, so it’s easy to understand why Balfe came up with a new theme to anchor this film’s action sequences. It’s used prominently in both the early action track “Snowplough Chase” and the late one “Bad Helicopter” and most prominently in the score’s centrepiece “Axel’s Return”, and while the sax solo in the latter may be slightly controversial (it’s an appropriate nod back to a defining sound of the 1980s, but not the sound of Faltermeyer) I think these two cues are really great. A fair bit of the score is a bit more low-key though – with songs being used in most of the film’s more prominent moments, Balfe has to weave stuff in between. I like the retro synth feel (at times reminiscent of the composer’s Tetris score) and when he adds more modern (and more typical film music) sounds there’s a hint of his Bad Boys style. I think it makes for a nice album that’s just the right length to tempt you to play it again after it’s finished and while it doesn’t quite replicate that Faltermeyer swagger, it does a nice job of paying homage to it while being a 2024 film score.

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