Lethal Weapon (1987) Review – This Is Pure Brilliance

There were buddy cop movies before Lethal Weapon.

48 Hrs. had already helped set the benchmark several years earlier, but when Lethal Weapon arrived in 1987, it took that formula and delivered something that would become one of the defining action franchises of its era.

Four movies followed, with the possibility of a fifth still hanging around all these years later, but this is where Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh began.

And what a beginning it was.

Lethal Weapon doesn’t need some enormous action sequence to get things moving. A young woman falls from a high-rise apartment to her death, apparently without any obvious reason why, and that’s it. It’s simple, dark and immediately sets in motion an investigation that eventually brings together two detectives who couldn’t be more different.

On one side we have Roger Murtaugh.

Danny Glover plays Murtaugh as the experienced, by-the-book family man who has reached 50 and is already beginning to wonder whether police work is becoming a young man’s game.

“I’m too old for this shit.”

It would become synonymous with Murtaugh over the course of four movies, but then along comes a partner capable of making anyone feel too old for this shit.

Martin Riggs.

Mel Gibson completely nails Riggs from the moment we meet him. He’s young, former Special Forces, incredibly dangerous and carrying around a death wish following the loss of his wife in a car accident. Riggs doesn’t simply take risks in the line of duty; at this point in his life, he genuinely doesn’t seem to care whether he comes back from them.

There’s a fantastic sequence where a sniper is firing at children in a schoolyard and Riggs simply walks straight into the open, cigarette hanging from his mouth, and starts firing back.

It’s completely reckless.

It’s also Martin Riggs in a nutshell.

Gibson manages to make him funny, charismatic and unpredictable, but underneath all of that is a genuinely damaged man. There’s always the suggestion among his fellow officers that Riggs might just be pretending to be crazy to get himself a disability pension.

He’s not.

Riggs is living right on the edge, and Gibson makes that pain feel real rather than simply using it as an excuse to create an eccentric action hero.

Then you put him beside Murtaugh.

That’s where Lethal Weapon becomes something special.

The two are basically yin and yang. Murtaugh wants to assess a situation, follow procedure and preferably get everyone home alive. Riggs sees a man threatening to jump from a rooftop, handcuffs himself to him and jumps off the building.

That pretty much sums up their early partnership.

Naturally, Murtaugh initially thinks Riggs is an absolute lunatic, but gradually he begins to understand the man underneath all that recklessness. More importantly, once things really go to hell, Murtaugh discovers that there’s nobody he’d rather have watching his back.

Gibson and Glover’s chemistry is fantastic.

It’s difficult now to separate either actor from these characters. Even something as simple as Murtaugh screaming “Riggs!” whenever another situation inevitably gets out of control became part of the personality of these movies.

Director Richard Donner also makes sure the friendship is surrounded by some tremendous action.

The desert sequence is a particular favourite of mine. Riggs gets the opportunity to put his Special Forces background to use with a sniper rifle, and the entire sequence gives us a glimpse of just how formidable he really is when the situation calls for it.

Then there’s the finale.

Riggs is captured and tortured before breaking free, Murtaugh gets his opportunity to turn the tables, and everything eventually leads back to Murtaugh’s house where Riggs faces Gary Busey’s Mr. Joshua one-on-one on the front lawn.

By that point the case is essentially finished.

Riggs could leave it there.

Of course he doesn’t.

He wants Joshua.

And what follows is a wonderfully brutal, rain-soaked fight between two men who have spent the entire movie establishing just how dangerous they are. It’s messy, physical and exactly the kind of finale Lethal Weapon deserves.

Gary Busey is also perfectly cast as Joshua. He has the same dangerous unpredictability as Riggs but without the humanity holding him together, making him a great physical counterpart for Gibson.

And then there’s the other important question surrounding Lethal Weapon.

Is it a Christmas movie?

Well, it takes place at Christmas, there are Christmas decorations everywhere, Christmas music runs through the film and the finale takes place beside a Christmas tree.

That’s good enough for me.

If Die Hard gets invited to the Christmas movie party every year, Lethal Weapon is coming too.

More importantly, almost 40 years later, Lethal Weapon hasn’t lost what made it special. The action still works, the humour lands and the relationship between Riggs and Murtaugh remains the heart of everything.

That’s ultimately why the franchise became what it did.

You can have shootouts, explosions, car chases and villains, but without Gibson and Glover, Lethal Weapon simply isn’t Lethal Weapon.

The remarkable thing is that this was only the beginning. Three sequels followed and, for me, the quality never dropped. The characters grew, the family expanded and Riggs and Murtaugh became one of cinema’s great action partnerships.

But it all started here.

Richard Donner delivered an action classic, Mel Gibson gave us the definitive loose-cannon cop and Danny Glover gave him the perfect partner to keep him somewhere vaguely close to the rails.

Lethal Weapon isn’t just a great buddy cop movie.

It’s one of the best to ever do it.