Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

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.

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. The gulf between my review of Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) and this film is a little odd, as I started re-watching this one immediately thereafter, drifted somewhere in the middle of the hockey game sequence, and then five years passed before I came back to it.

Did I Like It: That probably tells you something. There’s at least some degree of difficulty finding Gibson charming when he isn’t trying to be feral. Naturally, someone like Mad Max is never going to be anything other than feral, but eventually now that Riggs has found some place to belong in the world and gotten as much revenge for the death of his wife as he’s likely ever going to get, what is left for the character to do? Domesticate himself? That’s never going to seem like anything less than genuine, and the whole film suffers for it.

Relying on Glover or Pesci to pick up the slack doesn’t seem like much of a recipe for a three-quel. Glover is doing the same schtick he’s been doing for three films now, and he’s a much better actor that the series was ever able to challenge him to display. Pesci provided the most annoying parts of the previous film, and I’ve got a couple of comments about whatever marketing report insisted he receive third billing behind Glover and Gibson. The buddy cup duo is a well-worn formula. The buddy cop and their friend building a trio was an awkward enough phrase to type for this review, to say nothing of trying to jam it into a poster or Syd Field’s three-act structure.

And this thing came out like a week and a half after the Rodney King riots. How could it possibly have played as anything other than tone-deaf, even in that magical, far away land of “another time.” Even the cartoonish treatment of Apartheid in 2 felt like something of a moral stance, not just random highlighting of stories from the Los Angeles Times.

No wonder Jeffrey Boam got credited three times for writing the film*. It’s a disjointed mess, and the film can’t even decide who’s responsible.

*Yes, I know how the credits got like that. There still has to be a point when the WGA decides what their rules dictate are just going to make them look like idiots.