AXEL FOLEY
Beverly Hills Cop’s badge-wielding chatterbox isn’t the most obvious hero. But these five quotes prove that his motormouth contains multitudes
“Oh, check Rolling Stone magazine’s Axel Foley. That’s what it is.”
This line launches the first of Foley’s trademark fib-flurries, in which he poses as a celebrity reporter in town to interview Michael Jackson to get a five-star hotel room at discount rate. While there’s nothing particularly virtuous about blagging a cheap bed, detectives do need rest to be at their sharpest, so this technically does count as policework — as well as warming him up for more crucial bluffs later in the case.
“I got thrown out of a window. What’s the fucking charge for getting pushed out of a moving car, huh? Jaywalking?” He may strut about with a giant grin on his face, but Foley never hesitates to fight injustice, even if it’s being doled out by people in uniform. His first confrontation with the LAPD shows that he won’t back down, however outgunned.
“All I need is a couple of bananas.”
How do you stop cops from tailing you? With a hefty dose of vitamin B6. Foley’s fruit gambit, stuffing bananas up a car’s tailpipe, demonstrates two heroic virtues: creativity and compassion (after all, he first treats them to free room service). In the original script, he used a potato — way less funny.
“They’re not just regular cops, okay? They’re super-cops. The only thing missing on these guys are capes.”
Axel’s smarts aren’t only used to get himself out of trouble. He uses them to get others off the hook too, as when he bigs up Taggart and Rosewood to their sceptical supervisor. And his generosity wins him two loyal friends.
“How can a Black man, dressed like me, just march into your warehouse, walk into the bonded area and start poking around without anybody asking any questions whatsoever?”
When in doubt, lie by telling the truth. A bout of verbal taekwondo that is truly heroic.
Much has been written about how Blade, and not the X-men or Spider-man, began the comic-book-movie revolution. Less has been written about how Wesley Snipes’ part-vampire vampire-killer remains the coolest comic-bookmovie hero to hit the big screen. It’s not just the leather ensemble, or the penchant for epic ‘superhero landings’ before they even became a thing. It’s the man’s incredible confidence. Not even Tony Stark could make a pay-off line as gloriously nonsensical as “Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill” work. Blade not only manages it, but manages to convince you he knows what he means. He’s so cool, he could go by his real first name and still outshine the Avengers. All hail… Eric.