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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 1 December 2005
This article is a review of LETHAL WEAPON. |
Murtaugh, “God hates me. That’s what it is.”
Riggs, “Hate him back; it works for me.”
Two lines not exactly in the yuletide spirit but nevertheless LETHAL WEAPON is one of the all time great Christmas movies, as well as action movies and “buddy” movies. Christmas is as integral to the plot as the banter and action. As a backdrop it is used to compliment, contrast and highlight the film’s themes.
Suicide runs throughout the film. It is no coincidence here that the festive season has the highest rate in the calendar. Gibson’s Riggs is a suicidal ex-special forces homicide detective unable to cope without his wife. In the sequel we find out she was mistakenly murdered instead of him. The film begins proper when Murtaugh (Glover) is partnered against his wishes with Riggs and assigned to investigate a prima facie suicide. A porn actress has dropped from a penthouse suite of an apartment block on to a parked car. Later we discover that it not only turns out to be murder but the victim is the daughter of one of Murtaugh’s Vietnam colleagues. As they delve deeper a particularly deadly gang (Shadow Company) trading in heroin begins to be connected to the burgeoning body count.
Riggs, “Hate him back; it works for me.”
Two lines not exactly in the yuletide spirit but nevertheless LETHAL WEAPON is one of the all time great Christmas movies, as well as action movies and “buddy” movies. Christmas is as integral to the plot as the banter and action. As a backdrop it is used to compliment, contrast and highlight the film’s themes.
Suicide runs throughout the film. It is no coincidence here that the festive season has the highest rate in the calendar. Gibson’s Riggs is a suicidal ex-special forces homicide detective unable to cope without his wife. In the sequel we find out she was mistakenly murdered instead of him. The film begins proper when Murtaugh (Glover) is partnered against his wishes with Riggs and assigned to investigate a prima facie suicide. A porn actress has dropped from a penthouse suite of an apartment block on to a parked car. Later we discover that it not only turns out to be murder but the victim is the daughter of one of Murtaugh’s Vietnam colleagues. As they delve deeper a particularly deadly gang (Shadow Company) trading in heroin begins to be connected to the burgeoning body count.
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The act of taking one’s life is also dealt with in the blackest of humour bordering on the uncompassionate. A rooftop office jumper is seen as a nuisance and is then forced to carry out his original wishes. He lands on a waiting airbag handcuffed to Riggs. He has no new found respect for life afterwards. One of the most important members of Shadow Company eventually uses a grenade to end it all.
Another staple of Christmas is children and family. Riggs’ loneliness is in sharp contrast to the bubbly home-life of Murtaugh. The festive spirit tempers some of the harsher elements of the film as it is used to add to the forces bringing Riggs into the fold of the Murtaugh family. However, children are in constant danger. The initial catalyst for the case is the daughter of a friend and her death is used as punishment for the sins of the father. Murtaugh’s own daughter is kidnapped and used as collateral to discover what our dynamic duo know. The murder of one of the police leads, the prostitute Dixie (Lycia Naff), is witnessed by children. In the director’s cut of the film, Riggs’ first call to arms is at a schoolyard sniper shooting.
The way the police and criminals act is in sharp contrast to the spirit of Christmas. The shear mercilessness on display is breath-taking in places, from the bone-crunching climatic martial arts smack-down (writer Shane Black denies scripting the cheering on of Riggs by the watching LAPD as he fights Joshua (Busey) – I guess pre-Rodney King and O.J. Simpson the director and producers thought it was acceptable), to the Riggs-Murtaugh desert rescue and the helicopter funeral assassination. Let’s not forget the torture of Riggs and Murtaugh, and the original theatrical release’s introduction of Riggs the cop as he carries out a sting on drug-dealing Christmas tree purveyors.
However, all is not doom and gloom - yuletide as apocalypse. The moments of levity come with the excellent banter which reinforces, no matter how obliquely, the comradeship of the time of Noel.
Murtaugh, “Is there anyone you’ve met that you haven’t killed?”
Riggs, “I haven’t killed you yet.”
Murtaugh, “Don’t do me no favours.”
Riggs, “I won’t.”
When LETHAL WEAPON was released nothing quite as visceral had been seen like it before in the action genre. It became a template for Hollywood that is still being used to this day (e.g. this year’s THE MAN with Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy). What made the movie so appealing was the Gibson-Glover axis; effectively a bickering married couple of opposites that shared a common sensibility toward the importance of their job. Their races were never an issue, more their ages and physicality. Virtually everything is seen from their perspectives so we are discovering as they are – it is a detective story after all, and not just a series of action set-pieces. The enjoyable 48 Hours may have been earlier but the relationship of the leads is as prisoner and captor not of equals. The following year DIE HARD used Christmas as a similar context for the ensuing carnage.
Gibson’s cup over-flows with charisma and was rightly catapulted to the leading-man A-list, and Glover too has real presence and comic-timing. As the poster accurately surmises,
“Two cops.
Glover carries a weapon…
Gibson is one.
He’s the only L.A. cop registered as a Lethal Weapon.”
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