Verdict:
After a lifetime of seeing this film in bits and pieces, whenever it happened to appear on TV, I finally saw it for the first time in its entirety, and the feelings are mixed. In my childhood memory, this thing was impeccable. It is Lethal Weapon for crying out loud! You were guaranteed to find cassette tapes of this movie in every Eastern European flee market in the 90s. It is the perfect action movie by popular verdict, right? Right? Well, watching it as an adult, after having seen a century’s worth of action movies, you start noticing the flaws.
The basic premise of the movie is so bland. It is a movie made in the 80s involving cops and drugs. The plot is at once convoluted and without impact. It’s hard to pay attention to and is not very logical, if you retrace all the steps. If you watch Lethal Weapon, I dare you to tell me the plot, without looking it up. And you can’t just say “Drugs.” Lethal Weapon has all the markings of an factory produced 80s action movie and could have disappeared into obscurity, were it not for the two people at its centre: Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.
The exploration of their characters becomes the primary plot: Mel Gibson’s character is crazy (something he is very good at playing) and Danny Glover’s character is famously “too old for this sh*t” and easily irritable. The movie has a number of scenes that explore these character traits, and this becomes the memorable part about the film.
Lethal Weapon is one of the most well-known examples of a buddy-cop movie. The main ingredients you need for a buddy cop movie are two good contrasting actors and a bit of chemistry between them. That is exactly what these two people give us. Nowadays, Mel Gibson’s personal reputation almost squeezed him out of Hollywood, but do not forget, he is an actor with great charisma and Glover turned out to be just the right counterpart to Gibson’s wackiness.
The first part of the movie, when these two are introduced and play off of each other’s energy, is the best part. There are a number of funny memorable scenes. But then the stupid creeps in. The cheesy 80s action stereotypes all start appearing, complete with shooting rifles from the hip and unnecessary one on one fist fights. The dialogue turns to crap and the humour dies. The movie revives briefly whenever Gary Busey comes on screen, but his character is supposed to be a cold-blooded professional, so his performance is rather wooden, due to no fault of his own.
What helps create the Lethal Weapon mood is the never-ending saxophone, and its substitute, a lonely lead guitar. They are firmly present throughout the film and work well with the sunlit L.A., creating a vacation feel.
This flick has a charm that keeps it afloat, but it’s a shame the story and the action is so dull.