Lethal
Weapon
If you compare the opening scenes of Lethal Weapon
and Lethal Weapon 4 you’ll see that one begins with a coked up hooker
stumbling off a balcony during the Christmas season and falling several stories
to her death and then the fourth film begins with a man doing the chicken dance
in his undies in the street. This is just an indication of the journey
that takes place over the Lethal Weapon films. The journey from being too
old for this shit, to not being too old for this shit, to Chris Rock.
The Lethal Weapon series is made up of two badassed action cop movies and two family comedy
movies. I wouldn’t say that this series
jumps genre with the same ambition as the Alien trilogy because action +
time = comedy, so all Lethal Weapon did was embrace that equation. Any given action series
will ultimately become silly given the right amount of sequels, usually two
max. So Lethal Weapon kinda pulls an Eminem and makes a joke out of itself before anybody else
has a chance. You may find this cheap
and dislike the second two films, however there’s no disputing the impact and
significance of the first two films.
There’s a reason Shane Black is known as “the guy who
wrote the script for Lethal Weapon” and not as “the guy who made pussy
jokes in Predator”. I think most
guys could die with a smile on their face if they’d done nothing else with
their life but make pussy jokes in Predator, and I’m not devaluing Shane
Black’s acting, in fact I think he was the Lawrence Olivier of guys who tell
pussy jokes then get killed by a space martian. What I’m saying is that writing Lethal
Weapon is one of the few monumental achievements that could overshadow his
iconic performance in Predator. A
lot of youngsters probably take the ground that Lethal Weapon and Lethal
Weapon 2 broke for granted and some people may even have a hard time
separating them from the films they later inspired.
Sure, Tango & Cash had lots of good laughs,
but the characters aren't anywhere near as memorable as Riggs and Murtaugh. If the
film hadn't been called Tango & Cash
people probably wouldn't even remember the main characters' names (Tango and
Cash, respectively). Mel Gibson's
performance as Riggs is memorably twitchy and not many screen cops on the verge
of a nervous suicidal breakdown do Three Stooges impressions.
Shane Black’s writing establishes Riggs’s insane
depression through several sad scenes of Mel putting a gun in his mouth and
then some awesome scenes of Riggs acting recklessly in police work including
the best action sequence in a Christmas Tree lot
ever. Riggs also establishes his
craziness by jumping off buildings and confronting snipers one on one from a
point of disadvantage. But for those
members of the audience that appreciate more subtle character development in
the tell-don't-show kinda way there's some great
nuanced writing where Riggs's psychiatrist screams how INSANE and SUICIDAL
Riggs is in front of the whole police department (I'm sure this violates
doctor-patient confidentiality, but exposition is like a court order, it
overrules all).
Shane Black also finds better way of dealing with
Riggs’s character by making him kinda messed up from
his days as a special forces ass-kicker and I think
Black makes a good decision by having him become a cop. Police work draws on Riggs’s skills of
fighting, shooting, and in the case of this film, enduring torture. A lot of movies that have ex-special forces
highly classified ass-kickers as heroes, such as Man On Fire or On
Deadly Ground or Transporter 2,
usually give them some weird pacifist second career like babysitting or driving
an ice cream truck or something that doesn’t seem like a logical choice for
somebody with their background. But a narc cop seems like a good fit to me. It’s not as demanding as that Rambo
jungle stuff, but the same principles apply.
Danny Glover's Murtaugh is
also a surprise, most buddy action flicks fall into one of two traps:
A) making one hero a
handsome, witty, perfect ass-kicking machine and the other bloke a useless old
trout for comic relief
B) casting Will Smith
Lethal Weapon avoids both these trappings.
Danny Glover's Murtaugh is a distinguished
family man ass-kicker. I love the
interrogation scene where they're beating him mercilessly and
Murtaugh simply keeps retorting "Go
spit!" to the ex-special forces badasses who
are torturing him. That's
restraint! Using a classy, unprofane expression like that in the face total
hopelessness is something I'd expect of James Bond, not some guy with mustard
stains on his tie gearing up for his pension.
Murtaugh also stares down a car speeding towards him in a
narrow alley and actually takes time to stretch his neck before deftly firing a
bullet right through the driver's forehead.
Not many actors can pull off scenes where they're putting up with
teasing from their kids and their wife's bad cooking, but can then do grade A
ass kicking in the same movie and have it seem logical for it to be the same
character. But Glover locks this
character's many sides down solid. I've
never been so intimidated by somebody in a sweater vest in all my cinematic
viewing experience.
It’s also something that may escape modern audiences but
Shane Black was really going against cop movie conventions with the Murtaugh character.
Considering Lethal Weapon is a film in the lineage of Dirty
Harry and Harry Callahan went through on average 1.3 partners per films, it
wouldn’t be unreasonable to kill Murtaugh off in
either the first or second Lethal Weapon films. If they’d killed him in part two it would be
a great setup for a revenge film, but would’ve probably made it the last in the
series. It used to be almost a given
that black characters would die in movies, especially horror and suspense. Things have changed since then, but Shane
Black’s script sets up to likelihood of Murtaugh’s
death as a suspenseful possibility.
Black sets up this possibility with many other cop film conventions such
as repeatedly mentioning Murtaugh’s impending
retirement and the cop superstitions of dying very close to retirement. But Black defies all these expectations and
does not kill Murtaugh off.
Obviously you’re not an idiot and if you’re
approaching the Lethal Weapon films for the first time you know there
are three sequels and you can look at the packaging and see Murtaugh
on the cover of all of them so you know he survives. Unless you concluded that he might die in the
first one and then come back as an advisor ghost like Obi-Wan does in those Star
Wars movies, in which case you are an idiot. But at the time of the first film’s release,
the possibility of Murtaugh’s death would’ve a source
of tension in the film.
“The magic is back.”
That was the poster tag line for Lethal Weapon 2,
when it was released. I loved the first
film but I wouldn’t exactly call a drunk ex-special
forces guy crying in his trailer and putting a pistol in his mouth
magical. I mean, I could see that being
applied to Lord of the Rings or something, but Lethal Weapon
wasn’t a film I’d ever have considered magical.
However, the trailer for Lethal Weapon 2 had a much better tag
line. It showed Murtaugh’s
house exploding and the flaming toilet landing on the hood of a cop car and Mr.
Movie Trailer Voice announces “This summer they’re not taking any crap!”
And thus the beginning of the humourization of Lethal Weapon. I’m not saying
that the second one is a comedy feature the way parts three and four are, but
we start to get a level of one-liners and comic relief characters of an action
film like Die Hard. This film is
still striving for brutality, even more so than the first one, but they’re
peppering it with more laughs.
The action in this instalment is actually more violent
than the first film, but the laughs are actually just as brutal as the action
parts. There’s a scene early on where
Riggs is demonstrating that he can free himself from a straightjacket by
dislocating his shoulder. This is pretty
good character development and it’s being played for laughs, but in a Jackass
kind of way where it hurts to watch somebody torture himself, but it’s still
funny too. I’m also pretty sure that
scene where a guy gets decapitated by a projectile surf board is also supposed
to be funny, but again, funny in a brutal violent kinda
way.
Even the scene where Murtaugh
finds his toilet has been rigged with a bomb and he can’t get off it. That bomb is going to kill him, it’s going to
blow him apart junk first. But that’s implicitly
funny, right? I’m sure I’m not just some
sadist for finding humour in these scenes.
I’m sure they were intended to have a black humour to them because the
film’s actual action set pieces, although approached with equal brutality, are
intense and done without any jokeyness. I never find myself laughing at any key plot
point. Richard Donner
is a director who obviously knows how to subtly shift tone so that
dismemberment is funny early in the film when it happens to insignificant
henchman and brutally sadistic later on in the film when it happens to key
villains.
Lethal Weapon 2 is also groundbreaking as a sequel in that it’s personal revenge film,
but the hero is getting revenge for a character who
wasn’t even alive in the first instalment.
Shane Black does some clever writing to reveal that Riggs’s dead wife
was actually murdered in a way that doesn’t contradict the first film. And he does it in a way that makes sense.
This film is also interesting in that it’s a double-decker revenge.
The villain not only killed Riggs’s wife before the first film took
place, but he also killed his present girlfriend from this movie. The killing of the present girlfriend was
actually added in postproduction reshoots. If you watch the special features on the DVD
you can see the original ending they filmed where the girlfriend is alive and
well and enjoying Thanksgiving dinner. I
think this is one of the few cases where reshoots and
a new ending actually made a film more hardcore. But this was back in the 1980s when action
films were considered just meathead entertainment for guys and they probably
only test screened for the meathead demographic who demanded more
brutality. These days they try to make
movies accessible to everybody and so recuts
and reshoots usually result in a film that is more
bland, soft, and unbalanced.
I’m glad they didn’t go with the happy Thanksgiving
ending, but the way they do end is still kinda
funny. After a fierce fight to the
finish at the docks against the South African baddies Riggs and Murtaugh just lie there in a pile of blood and dead bodies
chuckling with each other like one of them farted or something and then this
wacky soft rock song that sounds like the theme from Baywatch starts
playing and the credits roll.
I know I’d be proud of killing all those corrupt drug
dealing diplomats and revoking their diplomatic immunity with bullets and all,
but I don’t know if a whole-hearted chuckle would come out right away like
that. I know these guys are sadists and
all, but maybe a more restrained handshake and a smile would’ve been more
realistic given the circumstances. I
guess I like that they’re laughing next to the bodies of the guys they killed
and when I watch this film I usually feel compelled to laugh along with them until
that Hall ‘n Oats sounding music starts playing and then I question what it is
I’m laughing at.
“The magic is back again!”
This was this unimaginative tag line to promote Lethal
Weapon 3. And it made me actually go
and consult IMDB to see if the tag line for the first film was “The magic is
here.” But it wasn’t. The first one had two tag lines:
“If these two can learn to stand
each other... the bad guys don't stand a chance.”
“Two Cops. Glover carries a weapon..... Gibson is one. He's the only
L.A cop registered as a Lethal Weapon”
Neither of these tag lines have anything
to do with magic, and like I said, I
didn’t consider the first film or the second to really be magical as much as
they were ass-kicking. But if ‘magic’ is
the word you use to describe the first one, then fine, you could argue that the
magic came back for the second one. But
using it for the third one is a bit of stretch seeing as Lethal Weapon 3
is a clear break in genre from the previous two, so therefore if there is
magic, it’s not back because this is new magic, romantic comedy magic. Maybe the tag line should’ve been “Some
new-school magic is about to hit.” or maybe “Heeeeyyyyyy! We got
Rene Russo! Come check this out!”
I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t think this is
the weakest film in the series. The
switch in genre to outright comedy is a bit jarring. The one-liners and witty banter that kept the
second film flowing go into overdrive on this one. The jokes are okay and most of the action
sequences are actually very well staged.
But it definitely doesn’t keep the pace up and the lack of a strong
villain really costs the film. I guess
when your other three villains are Gary Busey, a
bunch of crazy South African diplomats, and Jet Li you can afford to strike out
on the villain front once in series.
I know the previous Lethal Weapon films are
structured around their action sequences, but this film is a landmark in that
it is structured around the scheduled real life demolition of several
structures in
My favourite part of the film is a wacky vigilante
montage where Murtaugh goes berserk and runs around
with an uzi showing up in people’s homes and waking
them up at night to shake them and ask “Where’d
this gun come from? Who put this gun on
the street?”
Shane Black did not return to write this sequel. It seems that he thought he could actually be
something other “the guy who and wrote those Lethal Weapon movies” but
not “that guy who made pussy jokes in Predator”. Unfortunately that year he aimed to be “that
guy who wrote The Last Action Hero” instead, but that was a label that
he thankfully outlived. I guess if Shane
Black was in the mood to write an existentialist action spoof then I’m glad he
didn’t do it with the Lethal Weapon series.
Shane Black returned to help contribute a bit of
dialogue for the fourth film. Lethal
Weapon 4 was still a comedy like the third one, but this time it was actually
pretty funny and the action was more inventive.
This time they simply stated:
“The gang’s all here.”
I guess ‘the magic’ got too old for this shit. Aside from Riggs continuing his character arc
from badassed ex-special forces maniac to smartass
joker they actually bring in an actual stand-up comedian to make sure you know
they’re doing a comedy on purpose. Chris
Rock plays a character who basically just does Chris Rock comedy monologues.
In part 3 Riggs quit smoking. But I guess that was also supposed to be
representative of him quitting all his oral fixations because he doesn’t stick
a pistol in his mouth anymore either. He
even mocks his former psychiatrist and jests at the silliness of psychiatry, so
maybe he’s a scientologist now too.
This film is also a testament to Mel Gibson’s acting
powers. He’s finally ditched the Martin
Riggs action mullet and plaid shirt tucked into tight jeans that really defined
the character’s iconic look. Riggs now
has short hair and sports a leather jacket and basically looks exactly like
Gibson’s character in Payback, but Gibson’s acting is so strong that
despite identical appearances you wouldn’t have to watch either film for more
than a second to know which character you’re looking at.
I guess a few things do make this sequel special. The release date being one. They waited just long enough to put this film
out that it was clearly not just filmed back to back with the third one or greenlighted as soon as the third one made X amount
of dollars. But they also released it
while there were still young enough people to remember the first one. Quite unusual for a fourth entry when
compared to Die Hard, Terminator, and Indiana Jones.
The other thing that makes this sequel special is that
it brought Jet Li to the West. Out of Lethal
Weapon 4 Jet Li launched a career in mostly American movies that mostly
weren’t very good. The weird thing is
that it was a really inventive move in the first Lethal Weapon to make
the Riggs character a martial arts expert.
This was one of the first films to show an American action hero using
Asian martial arts in a typically American cop action plot line. A year after Lethal Weapon’s release Steven Seagal would debut with Above the Law and do the
same thing and it would become a staple of his films as well as many other
American action films from then on.
So I guess you could call it coming full circle to
bring in Jet Li as a legitimate martial arts master after having Mel Gibson
pretend to be one in the previous films.
You could argue that Riggs had studied Asian martial arts and then has
to fight the source. However I don’t
think so. But Riggs doesn’t really use
any of his advanced martial arts skills in the final fight against Jet Li at
the end. I think they just made the
villains kung-fu triad members because they flipped that action screenwriter’s
coin that has Russian mafia stamped on one side and Chinese triads on the
other. But of the two comedy entries in
the series part 4 is definitely the better of the two and there are some good
jokes involving torturing an elderly man at the dentist’s office.
I definitely feel that the two comedies sequels are
where Lethal Weapon definitely becomes what it inspires. However, they are sequels and so they have
that base of the first two films and they build the humour on those. Most descendants of Lethal Weapon don’t take
the time and care to build the relationships at the core of this series and
films like Rush Hour, Tango & Cash, Men In Black, Bad
Boyz, all skip right to Lethal Weapon 3. The filmmakers behind descendants know the
audience knows the formula and so they don’t feel like they have to connect the
dots, but it’s the character moments that really make these films classic.
A lot of people like to compare Lethal Weapon
and Die Hard, mostly because they came out within a year of each other,
but also because they are both set at Christmas time in
Lethal Weapon will always represent the pinnacle of buddy coppery and a milestone in
1980s action cinema. I believe strongly
in the timeless characters and standard of action in these films and have great
respect for the lethality of weapons and not being of too old for this shit as
well the return of the magic, and I know that you do too.
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