Eddie Murphy: Comedy in action

Director Brett Ratner says that when he set out to erect "Tower Heist," his new caper-adventure starring Eddie Murphy, he wanted to emulate the kind of action comedies that he had loved as a kid -- the kind of movies that might have starred Eddie Murphy.

"Eddie kind of invented the genre," Ratner said, referring to "48 HRS." and the "Beverly Hills Cop" series -- films that sandwiched Murphy's early, breakthrough years on "Saturday Night Live" and as a standup comedian. " 'Rush Hour,' which was part of my success, wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Eddie," Ratner said. "I grew up studying movies like this and Eddie did it better than anybody."

The Roosevelt-raised Murphy, now 50, has had a few dry seasons. Outside of the "Shrek" franchise, in which he voices Donkey, the star hasn't had anything close to a hit since "Norbit" (2007). "Meet Dave" (2008) crashed and burned; likewise "Imagine That" (2009), even if his performance seemed grossly underrated. So both he and Ratner, 42, have to be hoping that "Tower Heist" -- in which the disgruntled employees of a luxury Manhattan condominium rip off a Bernie Madoff-inspired con man -- bails them both out. The box office on Ratner's last theatrical feature, "Rush Hour 3," indicates that the franchise is exhausted; Murphy could certainly use a hit.

Toward that end, they've plighted their troth: When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out the Oscars next year, Ratner will be directing the show, and Murphy will be hosting.

"I'm looking forward to it," Murphy said. "And I promise I'll stay there all night."

That's a joke, folks. When Murphy failed to win an anticipated best supporting actor Oscar for "Dreamgirls," he walked out of the 2007 ceremonies, a move that not only took him out of contention for Sportsman of the Year, but fueled his ongoing image as something of an irascible prima donna.

But it was Murphy's idea that eventually became the script for "Tower Heist," and which has suddenly become a topical movie, one that reflects current events. When he's fired for an act of supreme insubordination, condo manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) assembles a misfit crew of would-be burglars -- including the street-wise and none-too-trustworthy Slide (Murphy) -- to rob the apartment of Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), an unscrupulous banker who has embezzled the retirement fund of the building's entire workforce. The situations are largely absurd; the premises unlikely. But the idea that someone could pull off what Shaw pulls off isn't exactly science fiction.

At a press event held at the Mandarin Oriental hotel -- which is across Columbus Circle from the movie's principal location, Trump Tower -- Murphy declined to take credit for being anything close to prescient. "That part wasn't my core idea," he said. "It was about a bunch of disgruntled employees trying to rip off the building they worked in. All that other stuff came later."

It wasn't their objective to reflect the Occupy Wall Street movement, or the Madoff case, either, Ratner said. "We wanted to make a great underdog story," the director said. "We didn't know that the culture was going to catch up to it.

"It's nice to make a movie that says something," he added. "But, in the end, I'm happy to have made a movie that's fun and has characters you can root for."

Those characters include the other employees, such as Cole, played by Casey Affleck; Odessa, played by Gabourey Sidibe ("Precious"); and Lester the doorman, played by Broadway vet Stephen McKinley Henderson. There's also FBI agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni) and a ruined broker named Chase Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick). "We kind of came to town at the same time, at the same age," Murphy said of himself and Broderick. "I was joking that, eventually, we'll be able to watch ourselves disintegrate on screen."

But not any time soon. "We wanted to make something grounded in reality," said Ratner, who re-created six blocks of the Thanksgiving Day parade (to accompany his footage of the real parade), and built a four-story replica of the Trump building out of which he could hang cast members and a car that figures so prominently in the plot, without endangering Columbus Circle or dog-walkers on Central Park West. "There are two kinds of heist movies," he said. "There's the dramatic movie like 'The Heist,' or whatever, and there's the caper film, which meant in the past a broader type of movie, where you're not really invested. I wanted something very real and very grounded."

Back when they were making "48 HRS.," Murphy said, director Walter Hill gave him a piece of advice. Namely, "This is not a comedy." Ratner said his movie reflects the same attitude.

"The comedy comes from the characters and the situations they're in," he said. "We didn't hire a bunch of comedians to be in this movie. We hired the best actors for these characters."

Gunshots and rimshots

Eddie Murphy's personae range from the outrageously comedic -- Donkey in "Shrek," for instance, or various species of "Klump" -- to the more nuanced and complex: His Oscar-nominated role in "Dreamgirls" -- James "Thunder" Early -- revealed what observers had long known, that Murphy could hold his own with anyone (and that great comedians are great actors). However: There's an entire substratum of Eddie Murphy as action hero, with the following being among the good, the bad and the grossly misguided.

"48 HRS." (1982) Murphy made one of the great movie debuts ever as hustler and convict Reggie Hammond, who could only be trusted as far as you could throw him but was lovably felonious all the same. Paired up with Nick Nolte (as the hard-bitten Jack Cates), Murphy helps solve a murder, crack a lot of jokes and establish the "buddy cop" genre that would survive all the "Lethal Weapons" and even "Another 48 HRS."

"BEVERLY HILLS COP" (1984) In what would turn into a hugely successful franchise, Murphy starred as rule-breaking Detroit detective Axel Foley, who heads for Beverly Hills to solve the murder of his best friend. There, he meets some starchy fellow officers (Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Ronny Cox), doesn't quite convert them to his brand of law enforcement and hunts down a criminal played by Stephen Berkoff, all the while making the year's biggest movie.

"VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN" (1995) Largely forgotten pairing of Murphy with horror maestro Wes Craven, about a Caribbean vampire on the prowl in Brooklyn, looking for Angela Bassett. Murphy wrote the script with his brother Charles and stepbrother Vernon Lynch and played multiple roles, including an alcoholic preacher and an Italian gangster.

"SHOWTIME" (2002) Murphy played a would-be actor-turned-policeman who through a series of unlikely events is teamed up with a colleague (Robert De Niro) on a reality TV show. "Witless" was among the words used to describe it.

"I SPY" (2002) Murphy and Owen Wilson switched the roles played by Robert Culp and Bill Cosby on the old NBC TV show -- Murphy played Kelly Robinson and Wilson played trainer Alexander Scott. It didn't matter. The movie was a waste of both actors' time.