Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m back from vacation and back on the grind, churning through episodes of Shoushimin Series as I work to once more be up to date on every single Current Project. The series is proving to be even more compelling than I anticipated, a sharp-edged variation on Hyouka that possesses many of its predecessor’s strengths alongside a few new tricks of its own. My housemates have also introduced me to Balatro, which was very reckless and cruel of them, as the game is designed to tickle basically every obsessive game-design bone in my body. So I’m basically drafting a storm engine in the form of a poker deck, where even playing out a winning hand improves my combo pieces? Fucked up stuff, people. Anyway, let’s get to some films!
First up this week was the recent Beverly Hills Cop revival, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Years after his original escapades, Axel Foley is drawn back to Beverly Hills by a criminal conspiracy involving his estranged daughter Jane (Taylour Paige) and old friend Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold). But things have changed in the years since Foley made his reputation, and Axel soon learns that neither his reliable talents nor his old allies can necessarily be trusted.
Making a new Beverly Hills Cop in 2024 feels like an impossible challenge. Navigating our shifting cultural relationship with the police, balancing nostalgia and new tricks, avoiding a retread of the regrettable third entry; it’s a lot to handle, particularly for a franchise that at its best feels breezy and effortless, irreverent yet instantly likable. All those weighty preconditions only make it all the more impressive that Axel F is such a success, a natural continuation of Axel’s saga that manages to critique his legacy without getting bogged down in self-recrimination.
The key is, of course, Eddie Murphy’s incredible charisma. While the original Beverly Hills Cop films saw him riding high on his ability to convince anyone of anything, Murphy is just as funny playing the stooge as the con man, making it easy for Axel F to lightheartedly challenge the ‘80s ideal of the casually lawbreaking supercop. The film’s balance of new and returning variables is handled just as gracefully; though everyone you’d want to see return does (including a fantastic extended turn by Bronson Pinchot, whose Serge remains the franchise’s best bit player), Taylour Paige and Joseph Gordon-Levitt inject the film with a dose of adrenaline, offering new takes on the veteran and straight man for Murphy to bounce off. Ultimately, Axel F navigates its countless expectations as gracefully as Foley himself, improbably reviving this venerable franchise in style.
We then checked out Cyborg, a low-budget post-apocalyptic feature by B-movie maestro Albert Pyun, a man who truly knows how to stretch a budget. Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as a mercenary hired to protect the cyborg Pearl Prophet as she journeys down the Atlantic coast, bearing information that will provide a cure for the plague facing humanity. He is impeded in this mission by Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn), a bandit warlord who actually likes this post-apocalyptic wasteland just fine. So basically it’s a shoestring budget Children of Men or The Road or whatnot, full of ominous burned-out cityscapes and high kicks from the high kicking master.
Cyborg is a generously apportioned slice of exactly what you’d expect given the materials at hand. The script is rudimentary and narrative archetypal, but Pyun’s intricate set designs and inspired use of lighting actually make for an unexpectedly beautiful production, while Vincent Klyn does a fine job of living up to the high standards of villainy expected from a name like “Fender Tremolo.” And of course, Van Damme is always a treat, offering plenty of dazzling high kicks and somewhat less convincing line reads. They even find a way to incorporate one of his signature splits into a kill, a clear sign this film fully understands its audience’s expectations. A thoroughly satisfying late-night drive-in feature.
We then continued our direct-to-video horror plundering with Wrong Turn 3, which trades out its predecessor’s reality show gimmick for an “are the cannibal hillbillies the real monsters” prisoner transfer scenario. A handful of prisoners are being transferred through prime hillbilly territory, they are unsurprisingly derailed by the resident hillbillies, and then prisoners and guards must work together to survive a night’s worth of hillbilly havoc.
You can feel the deflation of this franchise’s tires by this point, as it trades in its predecessor’s manic energy and inventive array of kills for a whole lot of arguing about who’s carrying what and marching through the forest. They’re clearly trying to go for a more character-focused approach this time, but outside of the intensity provided by Tamer Hassan (here playing the paranoid head of a crime family), no one steps up to the challenge of embodying a compelling character. Couple that with the film’s general lack of action and unfortunate reliance on CG over practical effects, and you end with an altogether disappointing feature even by daytime slasher standards.
Last up for the week was Born on the Fourth of July, a biographical war drama directed by Oliver Stone, and starring Tom Cruise as real-life Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic. Inspired at an early age to join the marines, Kovic witnesses atrocities beyond description overseas, and is ultimately paralyzed from the waist down. Back home, he experiences shoddy care at his veteran’s hospital, distrust from his neighbors, and eventual rejection by his mother, whose vision of god and country is incompatible with her wheelchair-bound alcoholic son. Roaming the country and seeking a purpose, Kovic eventually finds redemption in challenging the war effort, rising to become a key voice among the chorus to end the Vietnam war.
It’s a familiar tale, but between Stone’s keen direction and Cruise’s absolute commitment to the material, this might well be the definitive telling. It also helps that Stone is drawing this story from an actual biography, with Kovic himself co-writing the film script, meaning Kovic’s journey is sprinkled with the sorts of errant, “narratively unproductive” tangents and details that often end up sanded off a more focused original screenplay.
A brief, electric turn by Willem Dafoe helps sell Kovic’s transformation, but the feature ultimately rides on Cruise’s shoulders, and he more than proves himself here, embracing the contradictions and rage of Kovic with an intensity and variability that demonstrates a top talent of immense range and negligible on-screen ego. It’s little surprise that Cruise stands as one of our last traditional movie stars; his ability to evoke leading man energy while entirely submerging himself into the needs of a picture is exceptional, a power that somehow makes you forget you are watching acclaimed movie star and real-life weirdo Tom Cruise.
