Eddie Who?

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Eddie Murphy needs to shoot off his mouth. It's his best weapon, and the one that's unique to his arsenal. When a movie mostly requires him to shoot off a gun he becomes just another action star, and another talent wasted in lazily miscalculated material.

It has been almost a decade since Murphy appeared in a movie that correctly balanced cheekiness and car chases. As it happened, that was Beverly Hills Cop. Ever since, the comedian has been a loose cannon, rolling aimlessly around on ships variously listing and listless. Beverly Hills Cop II, Murphy's first reprise of Axel Foley, the street-smart Detroit plainclothesman set down in Rodeo Drive and environs, was frantic and noisy. Beverly Hills Cop III is possibly a little less frazzling, but it's also a movie that's just going through the motions, without comic conviction, surprises or suspense. Hey, it's Eddie in his best part, the studio must have been thinking. No sweat, can't miss.

But, of course, it can. This time Axel is investigating a gang of counterfeiters operating out of an L.A. theme park, meant to suggest Disneyland. The mystery is minimal, just an excuse to get everybody on the rides. Steven E. de Souza's script is not so much written as constructed -- boom boom here, bang bang there. John Landis' direction consists mostly of just running the camera.

It's a measure of this dreadful movie's stupidity that it brings back Bronson Pinchot, the funny, madly accented art dealer of the first film, has him owning a security boutique, and then forces him to go on well past the point of the joke. Beverly Hills Cop III just might mark the point of no return in Eddie Murphy's career.