A huge box office hit and a vehicle for the comic talents of Eddie Murphy who in the 80s was a major star. This comedy cop thriller was originally devised as an action film for Sylvester Stallone but thankfully with Murphy on board and his fast talking comedy style this turned into a fun, hilarious and at times gritty comedy. He plays Axel Foley, a wise cracking Detroit detective constantly in trouble with his boss. When Axel's old childhood friend is murdered he heads off to Beverly Hills to try and find out who killed him. Unfortunately he soon comes up against the very strait laced local cops in the form of Judge Reinhold, John Ashton and Ronny Cox, who plays things strictly by the book! With an English bad guy played by stage actor Steven Berkoff (Hollywood loves a British baddie!) the actual investigation is fairly routine and clichéd because this is a film to highlight the talents of Murphy who ad-libs his way hilariously throughout and if you watch carefully you'll often see the other actors trying not to laugh (apparently many, many takes were ruined through corpsing). It's got a great 80s soundtrack, some actually shocking violence on a couple of occasions and some fantastically fun set pieces from an opening chase sequence involving an HGV to the final shoot out. Everyone's seen this but it's worth checking it out again as it's such fun.