Lethal Weapon review

Lethal Weapon Still a Killer

By Oggy Bleacher

“Do ya really wanna jump?” Sgt. Martin Riggs, portrayed by a young Mel Gibson, asks this question of a man preparing to launch himself onto Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. The question manages to capture the best and the worst this 20-year old film has to offer. The episode (taking place on an additional platform built for the scene) is a complete deviation from the plot. I can hear then 26 year-old writer Shane Black argue “But it establishes how crazy Riggs really is!” Remember, 1987 audiences had to be convinced Mel Gibson was crazy. Black managed to convince the only two people who mattered: Producer Joel Silver and Director Richard Donner (Superman I, The Goonies). And so we have Riggs leaping, hand in hand, onto an air bag. “Let’s do it again!” says Riggs. Good fun, but what the hell does this have to do with anything, and does it matter?

On May 4th, Lethal Weapon was honored as part of the AMPAS Science and Technology council’s Sound, Camera, Action! Series. LW Uno was nominated for Best Sound in 1987 and deservedly so. Sound techs had the task of separating essential/clever dialogue from the cacophony of explosions, gunfire, and Dick Donner’s mid-action screaming. These sound techs included Les Fresholtz and Vern Poore, who were both part of a pre-screening panel moderated by a humble Mr. Black. Also on the panel were Dick Donner, Mark Canton, Stephen Goldblatt, and the unchained Gary Busey, who stole the show as Mr. Joshua. Interesting tidbits they shared with the audience of fans and VIPs were alternate titles (Blue Cheer, The Night it Snowed in Hollywood, Dixie’s Delight) and how Donner managed to get a P.O.V shot of the initial suicide as she fell from the International Tower in Long Beach (production designer Michael Riva painted the street scene on a tarp, which was then placed over the safety air bag). Black also joked that the open bar reception and screening itself had a budget of $15 million, while the film only cost $16 million.

Credit Dick Donner with squeezing the most out of the budget. In the hands of a lesser director this script would not have lasted 20 weeks, let alone 20 years. One-liners signal the end to almost every scene; Riggs’s suicidal tendencies are only held in check by his “love for the job!” Ugh. The Vietnam War is partially to blame for…everything. Sgt. Roger Murtaugh, played by then 41-year old Danny Glover, celebrates his 50th birthday and then spends the next three days moaning about his age. Everything about the tandem suggests a 21-year old Shane Black, finishing up at UCLA, watched 48 Hours about 100 times. Or is it a coincidence that Riggs and Murtaugh answer to a Captain Ed Murphy? Instead of a convict and a grisly detective, Black invented a suicidal loose cannon and a family man. The chemistry clicked and Glover and Gibson have done three sequels thus far, all directed by Donner and all with stronger plots than the original.

It’s the attention to details that give this franchise legs. The television commercials, the Christmas lights, Burbank the cat, Sam the dog, the original Christmas Carol, The Three Stooges motif, Eric Clapton’s music selection, including a sexy saxophone theme, do their job while keeping a low profile. Make no mistake; it takes a real pro to engineer the sound of a bullet being loaded into the chamber of a gun. I recently watched Mission Impossible III and found it incomprehensible. It felt like a device had been injected into my nose rather than the nose of Agent Hunt. That device projected a Justin Timberlake music video on the inside of my eyeballs. It was painful. I didn’t feel that pain watching Lethal Weapon. The chaos had order. The sound was occasionally broken by…silence. And even though our heroes never actually located the fabled shipment of heroin, they did kill every villain, and Riggs was ultimately able to let go of his dead wife. As Black pointed out, “Nobody remembers the plot of Lethal Weapon. It’s the characters that make it good.” Add to that list the sound, the directing, the acting, the production design, the music, gunfire, and vulgarity…lots of vulgarity.