Lethal Weapon (1987) – Film Review

Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey
Certificate: 18

By Roger Crow

I can only imagine the field day LAPD’s HR department would have had with Martin Riggs in 1987.

A brilliant cop, yes, but also suicidal on a daily basis, and a borderline psychopath. But that’s just what we wanted from our eighties cops. OTT, madder, badder, sexier, and wittier than anything we’d seen before.

Hollywood in early 1987 was not the sort of place that guaranteed a Mel Gibson hit. The third Mad Max had done okay in 1985, but films like Mrs Soffel and The River had underperformed. Gibson wasn’t just hungry for a hit. He was ravenous.

Thankfully screenwriter Shane Black had a killer script, and in the hands of super producer Joel Silver and Superman director Richard Donner, Gibson was in safe hands. He got to do his Mad Max schtick, which wasn’t hard as the Aussie post-apocalyptic cop was basically Riggs in a future, or past life. And there are times Mel is superb, whether sobbing over his dead wife’s photo or doing his batsh*t crazy routine.

“Tough as nails”

Lethal Weapon was just a culture clash buddy cop movie like Donner had done years earlier. And of the four Lethal Weapon films, this was easily the best because Riggs and Murtagh had the biggest character arcs.

On 4K UHD, the picture quality is great, even though those inky blacks are so dark it’s hard to see anything at times. And structurally it’s perfect. Roger (Danny Glover) is the family man pondering life on his 50th birthday (he was 38). Martin, the grieving loner who lives in a caravan on the beach with his adorable dog.

The bad guys include Gary Busey as Mr Joshua, who is equally as crazy as Riggs. He can withstand a disposable lighter on his forearm, so we know he’s as tough as nails.

It’s a pleasure seeing the director’s cut after all these years. The new release features the standard theatrical cut and Richard Donner’s longer version. It includes a fabulous early scene with Riggs facing off against a sniper, which underlines just how unhinged he is. There’s also a ‘new’ moment when he picks up a sex worker he wants to watch the Three Stooges on TV with him.

The score is all power chords by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen, which gives the movie a bluesy vibe, and was clearly an attempt to repeat the genius score from 1985 TV smash Edge of Darkness.

“Fabulous tribute”

Gibson might have blotted his copybook in recent years, but this is a glorious reminder of when he was big-screen dynamite. Had Donner used half the dialogue, it would have been a much better movie, because it’s a bit too chatty for its own good at times.

Gibbo and Glover are far better actors when they say a lot less.

It’s amazing how similar the end is to Die Hard, which was released a year later, but at times feels like the same film. And it’s also great to spot the Silver Pictures logo on a psychiatrist’s necklace; the reference to Air America, which Mel made three years after this, and the clip of Scrooge. Donner helmed sublime comedy Scrooged in 1988.

Extras include ‘Legacy of Inspiration’, a fabulous tribute to Richard Donner, one of the greatest American producer directors for TV or film. Without him, the Lethal Weapon saga would have been a very different beast. And it’s great seeing some of the cast as they look now, almost 40 years later. No sign of Mel though, who was obviously busy that day.

I might be six years older than the other Roger in Lethal Weapon, but unlike him, I’m not “too old for this sh*t.” Fabulously entertaining.

Roger Crow( Writer )

Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
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