Lethal Weapon **** (1987, Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Mitchell Ryan, Gary Busey) – Classic Movie Review 2657

Director Richard Donner’s thrilling 1987 buddy police action thriller Lethal Weapon spectacularly revived Mel Gibson’s then flagging film career after a few box-office disappointments. Donner said the casting was ‘magical, just total dynamite’. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover star as a mismatched pair of LAPD detectives, with Mitchell Ryan (as General Peter McAllister) and Gary Busey (as Joshua) playing their main adversaries.

It is a fast, funny, and furious odd-couple cop movie in which Gibson plays the vigilante rogue cop Narcotics Sergeant Martin Riggs, a lethal, loose-cannon loner still grieving after his wife’s recent death in a car crash traffic accident. A former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier-turned, he is now volatile and suicidal.

Danny Glover plays the nice, near-retirement married partner Homicide Sergeant Roger Murtaugh, who has recently celebrated his 50th birthday, to tackle a drugs ring. Riggs’s behaviour worries his superiors, who transfer him to Homicide, making him and Murtaugh reluctant partners.

The plot starts when Murtaugh is called to investigate a suicide and learns, to his surprise, that the victim is Amanda Hunsaker, the daughter of his old Vietnam War friend Michael Hunsaker (Tom Atkins), who had recently tried to contact him. Murtaugh and Riggs team up to investigate what turns out to be a murder when autopsy results show that Amanda had taken drugs laced with drain cleaner.

The charismatic stars and Donner’s breathlessly pacey direction turn the fairly routine tale into a violent all-action winner with a full complement of exhilarating chases, noisy explosions, buddy-buddy bantering humour and nasty villains. Gibson remains best known as an action hero, and his role as Riggs his most famous, followed by his Mad Max character.

The film was a massive box office hit – on a budget of $15million it took $120million – and resulted in a series of four films. The three sequels so far start with Lethal Weapon 2 in 1989, then Lethal Weapon 3 and Lethal Weapon 4.

Lethal Weapon runs 110 minutes with 117 minutes for the director’s cut. The cut TV version trims violence and bad language and runs 108 minutes.

Recent UCLA graduate Shane Black wrote the screenplay in mid-1985 and his agent sent it to producer Joel Silver, who sold it to Warner Bros, who hired Donner. Easy peasy. He went on to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005),  Iron Man 3 (2013) and The Nice Guys (2016).

Legendary stunt man Dar Robinson was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after principal photography was finished and the film is dedicated to him.

RIP Richard Donner, director of Superman (1978), Ladyhawke (1985), Lethal Weapon (1987) and Conspiracy Theory, who died on July 5, 2021, aged 91.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2657

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