Any discussion of music and film eventually has to include the name of Don Simpson. Rising through the ranks at Paramount in their legendary run of success in the 1970s, Simpson’s most notable work came in his producing partnership with Jerry Bruckheimer, resulting in a string of hits that came to define a particular kind of blockbuster. Though directors as varied (in their work with other producers, natch) as Adrian Lyne, Tony Scott, and Michael Bay received the credit for Simpson/Bruckheimer films, the auteurs in each case were the producers, and the signature style consisted almost exclusively of elements that would lead to the free pumping of as much adrenaline as possible. Especially in the early Simpson/Bruckheimer pictures, that goal was compassed through music. The early 80s saw the immediate and massive impact of MTV, with its energetic pop, impressionistic editing, both of which sold sex subliminally while maintaining an outward plausible deniability. Simpson saw the potential of transplanting that aesthetic from the short form to feature-length films, the influence of which is most directly visible before large-scale action increasingly became the Simpson/Bruckheimer calling card. That influence is strongest in Flashdance, but most artistically and dramatically effective in this week’s subject: Beverly Hills Cop.
There’s no one needle drop that stands out from any of the others in Beverly Hills Cop, which has few peers in terms of seamless integration, and indeed symbiosis, between soundtrack and movie. In terms of tone, the music gets things started, with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On.” It plays over a montage of various scenes around the city of Detroit, itself playing over the opening titles. It’s a solid piece of workmanlike pop from the Eagles emeritus, featuring an infectious saxophone refrain (as odd as that configuration of three words may seem to post-80s music listeners). The interplay between the images of the city, featuring abandoned buildings, poor and working class people hanging out, and the energetic, major key, propulsive song ends up lending a feeling of fondness and even sentiment to the sequence. It’s quite easy to imagine the identical shot sequence scored to more emotionally subdued or downbeat music establishing a weary tone of urban decay. That is, however, not this movie.
As crucial as “The Heat Is On” was to establishing the movie’s tone, the next song is the one that gives it tonal momentum. The first scene after the opening titles features Eddie Murphy attempting to sell a truckload of cigarettes to two lowlifes, only to be interrupted by a patrolling policeman. When the first lowlife exhorts his comrade “let’s get da fuck outta here!” and said comrade throws the truck into gear and takes off, the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” does the same.
Tonally and texturally of a piece with the earlier song but with a slightly different kind of exuberance, “Neutron Dance” is an especially crucial counterpoint to the chase sequence, wherein the lowlife driving the truck smashes dozens of cars, many of them police cars, and thoroughly destroys a good part of that section of the city, all the while laughing uproariously. The laughter isn’t necessarily a tonal bridge to the song’s ebullience, as with a more ominous musical accompaniment it could be read as a darker kind of mania, but with the Pointer Sisters singing him along, the glee in smashing things is transferred to the audience, who are given license to enjoy the ride (particularly since no people are seen to be injured).
With the ball thus rolling, Beverly Hills Cop maintains its cool, assured tone (with the help of its manifestly cool, assured—and Stoic—hero), with songs, score, and story working as one. Gradually—and, it would appear, coincidentally—the soundtrack transitions from songs to, almost exclusively, Howard Faltermayer’s score, with its iconic theme “Axel F,” the definitive piece of mid-80s synthesizer music (advocates of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” are advised to come to terms with second place being a fine place indeed). The variations in Faltermayer’s score reinforce all necessary emotional colors, including the one point in the story when things are at their most (briefly) serious, when Eddie Murphy and Lisa Eilbacher find the villains’ cocaine.
There are, to be sure, many elements that make Beverly Hills Cop the perfect pop movie that it is. Martin Brest’s direction is crisp, almost casually perfect (as it would be in his next, Midnight Run) and the cast is amazing, from Eddie Murphy’s superstar turn in the lead to the gallery of memorable and solid supporting performances. Even among the glittering array of positives, it is the music that drives Beverly Hills Cop forward. Into, and through, as many cop cars as you can put in its path. It’s the finest (not to say only) example of the aesthetic Don Simpson grafted onto cinema turning out to be a legitimately great movie, and it’s one that owes its greatness specifically to that aesthetic.
