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Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) has a nice, happy family
and a good, solid job. Things start to get crazy, though, when
he’s assigned to a new partner – Sergeant Martin Riggs
(Mel Gibson), an on the edge, suicidal sharpshooter. Murtaugh,
as he oft tells us, is “too old for this,” and we
immediately get the picture, without much need of explanation,
of the old, wise, just doing their job, kind of guy paired up
with a young, crazy guy with a gun. They start out hating each
other, of course. But you don’t have to have seen many movies
to know that they’re going to be good friends by the end
of the movie.
The adventure begins as the two of them investigate a run of the
mill suicide that ends up being not so run of the mill. Apparently
she’s been murdered. Murtaugh thinks he’s got it figured
out, but Riggs knows there’s something fishy about it all.
Some dead people later, the two of them figure out that there’s
a large scale drug operation going on and now the bad guys are
after them because they need to know what they know about it.
Many more dead people later, Riggs and Murtaugh are being tortured
by the bad guys for what they know. The two of them escape, of
course, and kill almost all of the bad guys, of course. And then,
just when they capture the main bad guy and lead you to believe
they are actually going to arrest someone, there is a ridiculously
unnecessary hand fight between Riggs and the main bad guy. I don’t
really need to tell the fate of the bad guy, do I?
The story finishes predictably enough. Riggs and Murtaugh end
up getting over their differences, of course. And, of course,
Riggs gets over his suicidal tendencies. Now it’s easy enough
to understand the bonds of friendship that emerge between two
guys as they save each other’s lives fighting a common enemy.
What’s less easy to understand is what, throughout the course
of the story, has led to Riggs’ suicidal change of heart.
Maybe it’s just the friendship of Murtaugh in itself. Maybe
it’s just a quick resolution for an interesting character
attribute.
For all of its silliness, though, Lethal Weapon is actually
fairly fun. The action is constant and the story keeps a pretty
quick pace. Both Gibson and Glover do just fine in their roles
and are always fun to watch. Of course.
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