Lethal Weapon 2
“Lethal Weapon 2” starts with a wild ride, and continues that way til our heroes are waiting for backup after a shootout at a harbor. Released two years after the first film in the action franchise, Richard Donner and producer Joel Silver up the ante in character, thrills, and more importantly, humor. That last part is a huge reason original writer Shane Black left the movie– he had a darker ending for Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in mind –but a big factor for why the series became so popular for the eleven years between the first film and the fourth one in 1998.
More humor does not necessarily mean a completely breezy form of entertainment, though; the story, regarding drug trafficking and money laundering involving South African diplomats, has some dramatic moments, especially when a revelation occurs with regards to how Riggs’s wife died. And then there’s the famous moment when Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) finds himself stuck on a toilet primed to explode (literally), but because of the nature of the situation, comedy is definitely going to occur. One of the great strengths of “Lethal Weapon 2” is the way it goes between laughs and tension effortlessly, getting a lot more mileage out of Jeffrey Boam’s screenplay than some directors might have, but that’s what makes Donner such a special filmmaker.
“Lethal Weapon 2” doesn’t get everything right, though, and it’s a problem that began to take hold in the ’80s. Just like with the “Die Hard” franchise, it wasn’t long before Riggs and Murtaugh (especially Riggs) became something of a superhero. He could be hurt and battered, to be sure, but miraculously at times, couldn’t be killed. This means it’s ultimately up to the actor to humanize the character, and keep him grounded, which is something Gibson never got enough credit for in his days as an action star. That was never more true than when he was paired up with Glover in these films. Something about these two actors, in these roles, just clicked from the very beginning, and regardless of how cartoonish the stories got. The first two “Lethal Weapon” films are still some of Gibson and Glover’s finest hours on-screen, and there’s ample evidence to back that up in this film.
A big part of “Lethal Weapon 2’s” success lies in pairing Gibson and Glover with Joe Pesci as Leo Getz, a con man who Riggs and Murtaugh are tasked with watching over until the feds pick him up (he’s going into witness protection for the aforementioned money laundering– see how conveniently that ties into the main story?). This was the first of three great Pesci performances in a row, which was followed up by his Oscar-winning work in Scorsese’s “GoodFellas” the next year, and then his dynamic performance in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” in 1991. Pesci came back for the third and fourth films in this franchise, but it was basically the same schtick he pulled here. It was entertaining, but he wasn’t quite as endearingly obnoxious as he was here, especially when he goes off about drive thrus (ain’t that the truth?) and starts to express his feelings about a commercial for condoms Murtaugh’s oldest daughter stars in. Pesci brings a comedic energy to the film all his own, and it makes a riotous entertainment even more so.
It saddens me that Donner hasn’t been able to do too many films in the past 16 years since the “Lethal Weapon” series ended– only “Timeline” and “16 Blocks,” as well as his cut of “Superman II” for DVD. He lacks the distinctive mayhem of a John Woo or Michael Bay, but he’s a great shooter, and as this franchise proved time and again, the man knows how to shoot action. In “Lethal Weapon 2,” we start with a car chase that is a master class in controlled chaos, with another one later that ends with a surfboard in a guy’s face; the spectacular destruction of a house of stilts by Riggs (which wasn’t a miniature but a full-sized house); a helicopter attack on Riggs’s beach-side trailer; and the final shootout on a freighter boat, where the main villains (played by Joss Ackland and Derrick O’Connor) finally get what they deserve. True, the film basically becomes Riggs and Murtaugh vs. South Africa, especially when the bad guys hide behind diplomatic immunity, and declare war on the LAPD (and our heroes’s friends), but it’s a rousing thriller, put together by a director working with just the right producer, and a screenplay that plays to all his strengths, at just the right moment before Hollywood’s “sequel syndrome” really became out of control. Did this film have something to do with that? Probably, but it’s still one of the best sequels Hollywood has made 25 years later. You can thank Richard Donner, who understands that economic storytelling doesn’t mean telling a completely predictable story, for that.
