LETHAL WEAPON: Blu-Ray (WB 1987) Warner Home Video

Interesting to see what time does to movies – or rather, our collective impressions on what constitutes movie art. Some films decidedly improve with age, while others, even as they remind us of a certain fondness for having seen them when they originally played, fail to rise to our level of affection, firmly ensconced in memory’s eye. Of this latter ilk is Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon (1987) a rather bland, gratuitously violent satire, loosely hinged on the redemption of its sincerely flawed, and occasionally goofy protagonist, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) - an ex-special forces soldier, whose life has quietly fallen apart since the untimely death of his wife. For those outside his native land, who only thought of Mel Gibson in passing as that ruggedly handsome Aussie, first glimpsed in 1979’s Mad Max, Lethal Weapon put Gibson’s star on the map – as well as Hollywood’s walk of fame, before catapulting it into the stratosphere where, ostensibly, it has remained ever since. And Lethal Weapon, in its time, was a huge box office hit, to spawn several sequels, continuing the upward trajectory of Gibson’s rise to prominence as every hot-blooded American woman’s hunk du jour. Again, odd to think of this time – having lived through it myself – and remembering then, what a massive tidal wave of notoriety Lethal Weapon wrought on the movie landscape. Suddenly, every studio had to have a buddy/buddy cop flick in its hopper.

It wasn’t simply that Lethal Weapon spawned a cottage industry of police-themed actioners, to permeate and overwhelm the market. It also took the brass ring in crude comedy and infused it into a genre that, until its time, had either played deadly serious (Tightrope, 1984) or strictly for laughs (Beverly Hills Cop, also 1984). For comic relief, Lethal Weapon interjects Danny Glover, charmingly off point as the harried and family-orientated by-the-book officer of the law, pitted against Gibson’s decidedly loose cannon. The joy in re-viewing, as opposed to reviewing, Lethal Weapon today, is largely found in that warm fuzzy ‘feel good’ for movies from a particular decade when we were young. For yours truly, this just happens to be the 1980’s – a decade, only in retrospect, made mostly of pure-spun cotton-candied fluff, with the intermittent, and, ‘perfectly timed for Oscar consideration’ grand epic or intense melodrama. A film like Lethal Weapon could never be Best Picture – and a good thing too, as even from the vantage of the whack-tac-ular eighties, Hollywood’s den of iniquity, controlled by bean counters, to whom only the bottom line matters, Academy voters – ostensibly, the arbitrators of ‘good taste’ – could still see the proverbial forest for its trees – Lethal Weapon, of the wormwood variety, rather than sturdy oak stock.    

The screenplay by Shane Black grafts an incongruous and unlikely buddy/buddy chemistry onto a frizzy little tale, darkly purposed in Nancy Reagan’s ‘just say ‘no’ anti-drug cultural renaissance, and, almost entirely driven by pure male machismo on testosterone overload. If sticks and stones could break one’s bones, then semi-automatic weapons would undoubtedly do some real damage. And in Lethal Weapon, the arsenal is raring to go. Eddie Murphy once pointed out that to make a successful comedy he had to do far more than simply provide his audiences with a ‘curse’ show – in other words, a litany of T&A jokes, interpolated by more blue humor and explicatives lobbed into the crowd with rapid fire delivery. But in the eighties, at least, an enterprising producer could do the equivalent of as much, trading barbs for blasters and bombs and, with a few bits of threadbare connective dialogue, actually have himself a movie – and not just any, but a smash hit, selling out the 7 and 9 o’clock shows. Lethal Weapon is such a movie – a mindless distraction whose entertainment value rests squarely with its precisely timed pistol fire. Confessing that this sort of thought-numbing carnage greatly appealed to an adolescent teenage boy, the years have weathered both the movie and my perceptions of it since – neither favorably.  

The action sequences staged by Bobby Bass, some actually pertaining to the central narrative, are a raging homage to armchair warriors with metal plates in their heads, or popcorn munchers everywhere who fall into the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of acting. By this, I mean they tend to be drawn out excuses to set off enough squibs to anesthetize a small whale, the thought-numbing SFX, distilling whatever shred of human dignity and pathos existed in the script, into a five-car-pile-up of brainless bodies and butchery. Set just prior to the Christmas holiday, our story begins with the half-naked Amanda Hunsaker (Jackie Swanson) clinging loosely to a balcony in her high-rise apartment, and even more precariously, to reality after having inhaled enough cocaine to stifle a stallion. The wrinkle: the narcotic has been laced with Drain-o, rendering it toxic. So, fatefully, Amanda plummets to her death. From this rather morbidly gruesome opener, the narrative departs into relative banality inside LAPD Det. Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) house. Roger is suffering from a mid-life crisis with the onset of his 50th birthday until he learns of Amanda's 'suicide'.

Meanwhile, in a rundown trailer near the beach, LAPD Det. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is wallowing in yet another round of self-pity, spending long tearful hours clutching his wife's picture in one hand, while mercilessly attempting to blow his brains out with a revolver in the other - always with a moment of clarity to prevent him from taking his own life. Regarded as a loose cannon by his superiors, Riggs is assigned to Murtaugh's unit - a move, destined to pit these unlikely partners against one another. At the behest of Amanda's grieving father, Michael (Tom Atkins), who also happens to be Roger's old war buddy, and, a man hiding a deep, dark secret, Martin and Roger begin their investigation into Amanda's homicide by questioning her pimp. Unfortunately, the pimp is killed in the confrontation with Roger developing a respect for Martin after he saves his life during the showdown. United in their cause, Martin and Roger next arrive at the home of Dixie (Lycia Naff) - a prostitute whose home is leveled by a cataclysmic explosion seconds before they arrive. Seeing Martin's army tattoo, a neighborhood child informs him of the arrival of another man earlier that day, and, in the resulting investigation and recovery of a mercury switch used to blow up Dixie's house, Martin realizes the 'accident' was actually a professional hit put out by ex-army intelligence.

Confronted with their findings, Michael confesses to Martin and Roger he was laundering money for a heroin-smuggling operation masterminded by Peter McAllister (Mitchell Ryan) and a shadowy figure known only as Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey). Amanda's murder was a way to retain Michael's silence. Unfortunately for Michael, his time has indeed run out. He is shot by Joshua from a helicopter. From here, the plot only grows more sinister and ominous with Joshua and McAllister turning their assassin's intent on Martin whom they mistakenly believe they have killed, though he is wearing a bulletproof vest and, of course, has impossibly managed to survive. Kidnapping Roger's daughter, Rianne (Tracy Wolfe), Joshua and McAllister next force an exchange with Roger whom they also plan to kill, though not before they torture him to learn how much of their operation he already knows. Refusing to tell his assailants anything, Roger is repeatedly brutalized - his wounds rubbed in salt. Meanwhile, Martin is revealed to be alive, captured and given several rounds of electro-shock before managing to free himself and rescue both Roger and Rianne.

In a harrowing escape, McAllister's car is detonated by a hand grenade, with Joshua heading to the Murtaugh family home to exact his final revenge against Roger for fowling their perfect plan. Instead, Joshua is apprehended by an army of L.A.'s finest. In a page that might have been scripted for the latest UFC bout, Martin and Joshua endure a demented battle of wills on Rogers front lawn, with both men driven to the brink of mental and physical exhaustion. Faking defeat, Joshua gains access to a police officer's pistol. But Roger and Martin are faster on the draw, killing Joshua in unison and thereby cementing their professional partnership and personal friendship for future sequels yet to follow. In the last few moments of the film, a patched together Martin arrives on Rogers doorstep Christmas Eve to give him the bullet he intended to use on himself, a symbolic token of thanks for their friendship, adding he believes Rianne has developed a crush on him as a result of his heroics. "Touch her and you're dead!" Roger jokingly replies, as the two men go into Roger's house to spend the holidays together. Ah, now don’t you just love a big-hearted Christmas movie?!?

Lethal Weapon has its moments. But on the whole, the movie has dated - badly. Mel Gibson's outrageously 'big' hair aside, the central narrative is threadbare on cohesiveness, its action sequences, somehow, void of relative importance to the story of two unlikely men - each facing a crisis of conscience and emotion - who awkwardly find a kindred spirit in one another. Gibson here is often embarrassingly second rate - a cheap knock-off of his Mad Max persona on Quaaludes and Lithium. At times, he seems to be playing it straight for dangerous realism, then inexplicably veers into the realm of grotesque camp with badly timed, and even more poorly written comedy at his disposal. Glover, on the other hand, remains relatively low key throughout, perhaps too much to be believed as a hot shot detective. Yes, there remains a definite and palpable chemistry between these two as the movie progresses. But it very often only surges forth in fits and sparks, rather than incrementally growing as the narrative blindly stumbles to its inevitable conclusion. In the final analysis, Lethal Weapon is a time capsule – a movie that could only have been conceived, and found its audience waiting to lap it up in the 1980’s.

Warner Home Video's Blu-Ray easily improves on its standard DVD incarnation. Color fidelity as well as fine detail take a quantum leap forward on the Blu-Ray. A rich, warm and fully saturated palette of hues is married to an extraordinary amount of minute detailing in everything from flesh tones to density of clothing and background information. This is one fine visual presentation, only occasionally marred by several softly rendered sequences that are probably more inherent of flaws in the original cinematography than they are of Blu-Ray mastering. The audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital and powerfully expressed across all speakers. Extras boil down to two brief featurettes imported directly from the original DVD presentation.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

2.5