“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
In the yearly debate whether or not “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie (which you know my stance on if you’ve read my piece on “Gremlins“), I feel like the superior Christmas action film gets left out of the conversation. That film obviously being “Lethal Weapon”. Sheathe your swords and/or tweets. I’m not demeaning “Die Hard”. I enjoy “Die Hard”. I have nothing against that film. However, it is simply not nearly my jam as much as “Lethal Weapon” is. It speaks to me on a unique level. Also, it’s kind of miraculous that it came together if you think about it. You have my beloved Shane Black’s first major script. You have Richard Donner, hot off “The Goonies” but also with a mountain of great work even before that point. You have a cast that is uniformly great… but obviously somewhat coming with a caveat these days. Regardless, it’s a film that’s both one of the greatest Christmas films of all-time while also being one of the greatest action films of all-time.
The overall plot isn’t as convoluted as some of Shane Black’s other works (especially since the mid-2000s) but I’ll still try to make it as simple and spoiler-free as possible for those that haven’t experienced the splendor of 1987’s “Lethal Weapon”. Danny Glover’s character of Roger Murtaugh is a Vietnam veteran in addition to being an older cop. In fact, the movie introduces him on his 50th birthday. He’s an affable guy and a great family man but for whatever reason, he can’t hold onto a partner and often works alone. Mel Gibson’s character of Martin Riggs is a younger man, also a Vietnam veteran and former Special Forces sniper. He’s recently lost his wife and is showing signs of being suicidal. By “showing signs of being suicidal”, one of his earliest scenes in the film is him in a private moment at home with a gun in his mouth, stopping just short of pulling the trigger. Publicly, he’s not any less obviously suicidal but most assume he’s just trying to draw a “psycho pension”, where he’d basically be on indefinite paid leave from the force due to his mental state. He’s transferred, which leads to him and Murtaugh being paired together. Two lone wolves forced together. The two of them, of course, spend a lot of time at odds before eventually finding common ground and slowly forming a bond. In the meantime, they start following a case that appears to simply be the suicide of the daughter of an old Army buddy of Murtaugh’s, only to find out it’s much bigger than they could have possibly imagined.
I guess the obvious place to start is with Riggs and Murtaugh themselves and the actors who play them in Mel Gibson and Danny Glover respectively. Admittedly, it’s difficult to say positive things about Gibson now but in the context of the film, he’s brilliant. Martin Riggs as a character is a guy who’s very funny and charming but a lot of that is covering a deep well of unimaginable sadness and Gibson pulls off all the different colors of the character beautifully and I don’t know if anyone else ever could. I’ve heard that he got the part of Hamlet after the director of that film saw the aforementioned scene with Riggs putting a gun in his mouth and I absolutely believe it. In the Mad Max films that preceded “Lethal Weapon”, Gibson absolutely showed incredible pathos but nothing really near the dynamics of what he’s asked to pull off here. He’s a large part of the drama while also being the comic relief, which had to have been incredibly difficult to pull off but Gibson makes it look effortless. Gibson may not be the most sympathetic guy in real life but Riggs undoubtedly is. He’s a guy that won’t kill himself despite all of his inner turmoil because he realizes how important his job is, so he keeps pushing on despite a massive weight on his shoulders, quipping all the while. Danny Glover’s essentially the straight man in a lot of ways but also manages to bring comedy and unbelievable heart to the role. Whereas Riggs is spinning almost to the point of being out of control due to his world outside of the job, Murtaugh is totally grounded by his home life in the best possible way. He’s probably who Riggs really wants to be in many ways. He’s a guy that also clearly understands the importance of his police work but is mostly just trying to be there for his family. It’s less of a showy role to be sure but the yin and yang of those two characters is something that has kept them in the public consciousness for decades now with no end in sight.
Those characters wouldn’t exist, however, without Shane Black. Black wanted to be an actor before he became a screenwriter and later a director. That fact absolutely shows in his attention to character and ear for dialogue. There’s also a HELL of a lot of plot as the film definitely has the hard-boiled noir elements that became hallmarks of Black’s work later on. That mostly comes in the way the story unfolds here though, especially in the plotting. However, in the end, the reason Lethal Weapon works is because of how strong the character work is. The plot is well constructed and all the action and comedy work spectacularly but none of it would come together without how realized the relationship between Riggs and Murtaugh is. It builds and grows into a bond not far from brotherhood over the course of the film and it is incredibly compelling. I don’t think it’s a stretch to point to “Lethal Weapon” as the original buddy cop film. In the same way a lot of action movies used “Die Hard” as a template with “Die Hard on/in a _” plotting, I imagine the flood of buddy cop films that followed “Lethal Weapon” and even the later work by Black himself owes a lot to this film. I don’t blame anyone for ripping it off though. It’s quite a template to work within, although I don’t think any film has ever truly done it as well as it’s pulled off in this case.
Granted, none of it would have been able to come together as well as it inevitably does without the genius of Richard Donner. I still don’t feel like Donner gets enough credit for how good of a filmmaker he can be, especially in this period. Whereas it was the beginning of Shane Black’s career, Donner was a roughly 30 year veteran of TV and film by the time he made “Lethal Weapon”. He’s a journeyman but as such, he’s clearly not lacking in confidence. Despite its almost pendulum like swings, the movie’s tone is never in question. Every choice Donner makes and therefore every second of the film is spot on. Donner brings the same lightness and fun and even the kind of sentimental quality he brought to stuff like “Superman” and “The Goonies” to this film while also being able to tap into darker elements like he did when making “The Omen”. The result is an amusing action film that also has stakes and a sense of danger to the characters. Being able to manage those elements is what keeps you on the edge of your seat even when you know in the back of your mind that the good guys are going to come out on top and evil will be punished.
I will admit that to me, Christmas is basically “Anxiety Day” and the main reason I like Christmas is because of the time preceding the actual day. I can watch any of the movies that I watch during the holidays any time, sure, but it’s really the one time of year that I can marathon Christmas movies for a month without feeling particularly weird about it. Having said that, “Lethal Weapon” is always one of the first that I reach for every year. Yes, many of the movies Shane Black wrote take place during the Christmas season and are part of that annual viewing tradition but there’s just nothing quite like “Lethal Weapon” to me. It was his first and his best.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch