Director: Richard Donner
Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo.
Have I Seen It Before: I had to have at some point.
That probably tells you a little bit. Do we even need a review at this point. Well, we’ve come all this way. Might as well.
Did I Like It: You know what this movie reminds me of? The fourth season of Arrested Development. Everyone is here, there are even some new high-profile people to try and awkwardly fit into the mix, but it never seems like everybody had the same availability. Joe Pesci flits through the film that I seriously wondered if the twist at the end was that Leo Getz had been dead the entire time.
Alas, no.
What’s left is a movie that is all incident, and only occasionally interested in some kind of a story. That might be a fair criticism of the series as a whole, so maybe Lethal Weapon 4 is the inevitable culmination of everything that came before.
Which brings me to the inevitable, and perhaps unanswerable question: Should this be the end? Should any of us—to say nothing of the cast—be subjected to the long-threatened Lethal Finale?
Riggs (Gibson) and Murtaugh (Glover) are playing things in this like aging is right on top of them*, can we even imagine them putting off retirement all the way into Gavin Newsom’s California? Would they be bickering pensioners brought into some case against their will and have to bicker along with a newer, gentler LAPD?
Or, worse yet, would some Syd Field three-acter try to steal the structure of The Godfather - Part II (1974) and we’d have to sit through alternating flashbacks, complete with CGI Gibson and Glover?
Better question: With the death of Richard Donner, are we really interested in Mel Gibson having the opportunity to have what might be a mainstream redemption?
Alas, no. Let’s leave it at this, shall we?
*Don’t make me write down the line.