Lethal Weapons

I turned 50 on Wednesday, but couldn’t figure any spectacular thing to say about that, as I’m trying to avoid talking about myself incessantly.   Having recently finished watching #4 of this series, after having seen these films awhile ago, maybe talking about them again, instead of my own “I’m getting too old for this s**t”, would be more fun.

All four take place in Los Angeles, California, featuring a “buddy” team of mismatched police officers with comically different personalities.  There’s a fair amount of humor herein to offset the inevitable violence, or as we testicle-equipped moviegoers prefer to think of it, "action".  “Dirty Harry” (San Francisco PD, Harry Callahan played by Clint Eastwood) and “Die Hard” (various different locales, NYPD officer John McLane, played by Bruce Willis) would be the obvious comparisons, though each of those feature a single detective and few, if any, recurring characters. 

Lethal Weapon (1) (1987).  The original.  Sgt. Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a seasoned police detective with the Los Angeles Police Dept., is assigned a new partner, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson).   Riggs recently lost his wife (no kids yet) in a tragic accident, the full details of which are more explicitly explained in the next film.  As such he is borderline suicidal and subject to the unwanted but professional attention of the LAPD police shrink.   He takes all sorts of bizarre risks, but unfortunately for Murtaugh tends to pull him into this as well.   For his part, Murtaugh has a wife, several children including an inconveniently attractive and provocative teenage daughter Rianne, and is getting close to retirement and as such is ill-inclined to take the exact type of unnecessary risks (e.g. “can’t we just wait for the bomb squad?”) which Riggs seems to enjoy taking. 

The bad guys are Vietnam veterans – spec ops types – running drugs from Southeast Asia.  Conveniently enough, Riggs was also in a similar unit and is likewise overqualified; Murtaugh describes himself has simply having been a rank and file combat soldier in WWI, thus his complaints about retiring.  The top bad guy is played by Gary Busey.  Aside from a good job playing Buddy Holly, Busey generally tends to do a good job playing annoying and unsympathetic villains.   Whether his nemesis is played by Mel Gibson or Steven Seagal, we want to see his damn character die as soon as possible.   

Oh, and the “lethal weapons” in question?  Murtaugh, unimaginatively enough, carries a police revolver, probably .38 and not even the much beloved .44 magnum (“make my day”).  Riggs carries, prominently even to the point of featuring on all the movie posters, a Beretta 92FS, my own gun.  Not only that, he carries that throughout the series, even to the point of  having Li’s character release the slide on it in melee combat (LW4).

As for whether any actual cops carry a .44 magnum, I found this thread rather amusing: https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/44-magnum-in-law-enforcement.814097/

In my own neck of the woods, I’m not seeing many cops carrying Berettas.  Glocks and SIGs seem to be far more popular.  It turns out that LAPD was using Berettas: https://www.tactical-life.com/firearms/big-10-protection-duty-guns-americas-largest-police-departments/

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).   As you may have noticed from my Facebook post, I watched this one.  Again, watching it again after a few years I pick up on a few things.

A.         Bad guys: South Africans laundering money.   “Diplomatic immunity” “…has just been revoked”.  I’m sure the State Dept. loved the movie’s assertion that simply shooting the diplomat in question is sufficient to revoke such immunity, which would do wonders to protect our own diplomats abroad.  Actually the movie raises the question of exactly how much diplomats can get away with under that policy.  Do we know?  Speeding tickets and incidental crimes are one thing, but ongoing criminal operations, including murdering local police, might well be another.  If there was a dispute on the issue the respective countries could take it up with Interpol, ICJ, the UN, or whatever.

 

B.         Dean Norris.  Yep, that’s Agent Hank Schrader (Walter White’s DEA brother-in-law in “Breaking Bad” – you have started watching, haven’t you?), though he’s one of Riggs’ and Murtaugh’s buddies who gets blown up.  As if killing cops is a viable strategy for deterring an investigation (“They killed our guys.  Let it slide.”)

C.         Leo Getz.  Joe Pesci’s character introduced in this movie.  Successfully straddling the line between annoying and endearing.  “They F**K you at the drive-thru!” is from this film – oddly edited to “FREAK” when censorship demands a notable catchphrase be edited for profanity if not plausibility. 

D.         Ms. Haagen Dasz (Van den Haas – Patsy Kensit).  They will correct the ongoing lack of a female love interest for Riggs in the next film with Rene Russo.

E.         Dislocated shoulder.  First Riggs uses it to get out of the strait jacket at the station, later uses it to escape from certain drowning.  Tragic – or convenient? – that Ms. Haagen Dasz lacks a similar ability.

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992).  Riggs & Murtaugh start out by blowing up a downtown building instead of letting the bomb squad take care of it, and get demoted to patrolmen.  Eventually they wind up with Lorna Cole (Rene Russo) who is with Internal Affairs (IA), the dept. which investigates corrupt cops.  Leo Getz is here trying to sell Murtaugh’s house, but buyers are put off by his excessive disclosures of all the weird stuff which happened at the house in the last two movies. 

The bad guy is a former cop, Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson) who hires other corrupt cops at his construction company outside town – fairly suave and unlikeable but nonetheless nonremarkable or memorable.  Easily the least interesting of the four villains.  Riggs & Cole hook up, Getz provides humor, and Murtaugh continues to whine about “too old for this” and now “I don’t want to die when I’m due to retire in a week”.  SSDD. 

Russo’s appearance, both as a new character and as a love interest to Riggs, are what essentially distinguish this film from #1 and 2.  The absence of Chris Rock (see below) is what distinguishes this film from the next one.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998).   Here’s why watching movies again helps.   My initial impression was that LW4 was running on fumes, so bereft of anything worth showing that they pulled in Chris Rock to make THREE bonus characters.  The truth is actually more fun.

Some poor Chinese people are smuggled into the US illegally by the Triads (Chinese mafia), some of who are enslaved in making counterfeit Chinese currency.  The bad guy is played by Jet Li, as charming and dangerous as ever.  In addition to Riggs (Gibson), Murtaugh (Glover), Getz – get it? (Pesci), and Cole (Russo – now pregnant with Riggs’ baby) we get Butters (Rock), unbeknownst to Murtaugh, having not merely impregnated his daughter Rianne but also married her without her father’s knowledge, much less permission (though as adults they don't legally need it).  He’s actually a junior member of LAPD and often involved directly in the pair's adventures.  I’d say Rock does a good job of making the new guy fit in and be as entertaining as the rest of the cast. 

Stuff blowing up?  Yep.  High speed chases on L.A. Freeway – much of which is entertainingly implausible? Gotcha.  Riggs fighting somewhat martial arts?  Yep.  Bad guys leave good people to die in dangerous situation (house burning down while victims are tied up and presumably unable to escape) without simply summarily executing them at point blank range with the handguns they’re carrying?  Need you ask?

Oh, now RIGGS is beginning to suspect that he’s getting too old for this.  While in the prior film both he and Murtaugh were summarily demoted to patrolmen in black uniforms, now due to the city’s insurance & union issues coinciding, they are both summarily promoted to captains, presumably junior to perpetually exasperated Captain Murphy himself (so where’s Captain Morgan?).  Yes, he’ll dislocate his shoulder yet again, and have a brief spat with the LAPD shrink, played by the same woman – again (“Mary Ellen, it’s your agent, I’ve got another police shrink role that’s perfect for you!”). 

Here ends the series, about as properly as it should, with Lorna giving birth & marrying Riggs, Rianne giving birth and making Murtaugh a grandfather, and none of the major characters dead.  Incidentally, they have a fifth film (!) ready to go, with Gibson and Glover on board, but no word yet on when it will be done.

Overall, the four movies are equally good, but after a point they melt into one another and I have a hard time keeping track of what happened in which movie.  I can keep track of when Getz (2), Cole (3), and Butters (4) were introduced and who the bad guys were, but even then only because I watched the films again recently, years after originally seeing them. 

New series.  They actually made a TV series of the show, starting in 2016, and actually used the original characters, though obviously using new actors.  Martin Riggs was played by Clayne Crawford, and Roger Murtaugh is played by Damon Wayans.  Seann William Scott, best known as “Stifler” from the “American Pie” films, took over as a character Wesley Cole when Crawford was fired for being a jerk and Riggs’ character killed off.  I haven’t actually seen this, but I’m vaguely aware of its existence.  Maybe I’ll look into it.