My wife is a HUGE fan of the Lethal Weapon movies. This may not seem like a big thing until you get to understand the fact that generally speaking she hates with the undying fire of a thousand suns action movies. Want to make her throw something at the tv screen? Try to put on pretty much anything featuring the likes of Seagal or VanDamme. This causes no real problems though as I’m no bigger a fan of such movies than she is.
So I was more than a bit surprised to discover how much she loved Lethal Weapon, especially the first and third ones. I had seen them, but I had never really sat and watched them. Viewing them with her gave me a deeper appreciation of the quality of the movies. But it’s only been recently that I’ve come to see things that I really hadn’t grasped before.
Heather had been making mention of jonesing for a rewatch and our copies had gone missing some time ago. Being purists only the directors cuts would really do, and sadly they weren’t available via Amazon for streaming. So a quick search netted me all four movies on DVD in one case. One Prime shipping later we had the movies and were happily watching. It was as I watched that first movie that something suddenly clicked.
They are using the trappings of an action movie to completely turn the genre on its head!
Now I know that at first glance that seems absurd. Especially if you’ve never actually sat and ya know watched the movies. But I’ll share with you some of the things I’ve seen and then you can go watch or rewatch them and tell me what you think.
The first thing you have to consider is that the most popular movies in the genre at that point were the Dirty Harry and Death Wish movies. These were movies where a loner (one a cop, one not) go forth and knowing that they are right when every one else is wrong kills bad people with steely eyed resolve and no visible emotion, save righteous fury. These movies celebrate the idea that only a person who has detached himself from connection with other people is truly free to do what is needed to keep others safe. And at first we are made to think that is exactly what we are getting in the character of Martin Riggs.
Riggs is shown to be a loose cannon. In a deleted scene (thankfully restored in the Director’s Cut) Riggs roles up on a scene where a lone sniper is killing school children. Riggs with no hesitation stands amidst a hail of bullets and with steely eyed determination and no visible emotion, save righteous fury face down and executes the gunman with a single well placed shot. After this comes a scene where he is briefly held hostage in a drug bust gone pooka. As the lead dealer holds him with a gun pointed at his head he keeps angrily insisting that one of the cops who have come as back up shoot the man regardless of what it might mean for his life. Fighting a yawn? Seen it all before? Yep. And that’s the point. To lull you into thinking that this is just another action movie. But what happens soon after is the first sign that something different is going on.
The next time we see Riggs he is alone in his shitty little trailer, watching TV and staring at a picture of his (soon to be revealed dead) wife. He is drinking and crying. And then he slowly loads a single gleaming bullet into his gun, and puts the gun in his mouth. A few moments later sobbing he removes the gun and curses his inability to follow through on his desire to end his life. Suddenly we see that all that steely eyed resolve comes from a place of incredible pain.
Meanwhile parallel to Riggs day we are shown the day of Roger Murtaugh. A seasoned police veteran and a man who is having his fiftieth birthday. A man of color. Our introduction to Roger is him in the bathtub getting surprised by his family. A loving wife and three loving kids. They do not act like stereotypes so common to 80's action movies. They come across as real people. Roger is shown as being good natured, low key, and well liked. He is basically everything that Riggs is not.
Then they meet. Since this is in framing at least an action movie, they are of course forced to be partners, and after the buddy cop version of meet cute (Murtaugh sees that Riggs has a gun and not knowing that he’s a cop attempts to apprehend him) we get some witty banter and there’s some hijinks. Now don’t misunderstand me, it’s really well done, and quite fun to watch. But I’m glossing over it because it’s more bait to set people up for the switch.
After some more action, Roger invites Martin home to have dinner with his family. Suddenly our steely eyed loner is given back his connections. Suddenly in that one dinner he is reminded that he is only alone as he wants to be. This awakens his desire to not be alone, and in another scene restored in the Director’s Cut he goes out and picks up a young hooker for the express purpose of coming back to his trailer and watching The Three Stooges with him. This is not about sex, but rather about him reaching out to another human being. But since Martin is still very damaged emotionally he doesn’t quite know how to do it in the normal way. In his line of work he interacts with criminals of varying kinds and so in dealing with a prostitute he feels more in his element than in hanging out with other people even other cops. (One of the keys to understanding Riggs at this point is to realize that Murtaugh is the first person to really extend any kind of friendship to the troubled man. Every one else has simply dismissed him as either crazy or faking.)
In due course we discover that as stable as Roger is, he is not free from trouble in his life. It is because of the emotional connection that he has made with Martin that ultimately his family is saved from danger.
So the day is saved. A friendship is formed. Roll credits. The end. Right? Wrong. There’s a sequel.
Now if this was a typical action movie series, in the next film everything would be returned more or less to square one. Riggs and Murtaugh would be estranged from each other and they’d have to learn how to be friends all over again. But that’s not what happens. Instead we are shown that in the time between the first film and the second the men have become like brothers. Riggs practically lives at Roger’s house, eating with them, doing his laundry there. We are shown connections growing deeper. And now we get a lovely moment between Martin and Roger’s wife where he talks about how his wife died.
We see a Martin Riggs who has healed to the point that he is ready to date again. And this time when in the course of the action tragedy strikes even though he is hurt, he is not destroyed, because of the connections he has formed with Roger and the Murtaugh clan.
This is the pattern followed in each of the subsequent films. Riggs world is enlarged to include an odd but endearing ex-swindler named Leo Getz. And then in the third movie he meets Lorna Cole. A fellow cop who is every bit his equal. Martin falls hard and fast in love.
And in the fourth and final movie, Lorna is still there, they are still in love. Unlike the vastly inferior Die Hard movies there is no return to status quo. These characters grown and change and are shaped by events that have come before.
Another key part of the appeal of the Lethal Weapon series is the way that it uses real world events to spur the action. The villians in the first one are the most generic (ex soldiers use connections forged in Vietnam to run a drug distribution ring). But the second one deals with Apartheid, the third with the proliferation of guns on city streets and in the hands of young black men, and the fourth with the plight of immigrants risking and ultimately losing their lives in an attempt to flee the land of their birth to reach the US. Now to be sure there is not a lot of depth, but I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people who might never have thought twice about those situations had their eyes opened at least a little bit by seeing them presented in a movie where things blow up and there are car chases.
There there are the female characters. The ones who get the most screen time are Roger’s wife Trish and eldest daughter Rianne, and the aforementioned Lorna Cole. We are never forced to endure hand wringing histrionics from Trish. She is a very smart, very together woman, who loves and supports her husband. She understands the job he does and the danger it comes with and even when that danger reaches their home, she doesn’t hector him with demands to quit or any crap like that. It’s not that she’s not upset by upsetting things, but understands that what he is doing is important to him. She’s no doormat, nor shrinking violet. She is probably one of the least cliched cop’s wife characters in all of action movie history. And as for Lorna? Holy shit does that woman rock. Seriously I defy you to name a stronger more balanced female character in the action movie genre.
Now to be certain the movies are not perfect. There is an undercurrent of homophobia that largely comes from Gibson I think. But that is fairly minor a nit put against the wit, and warmth that the movies offer. Their underlying message is that it is better to be a part than to be apart, and it is in connection that one finds strength. All wrapped up in slick action movie packaging.
But don’t just take my word for it. Do yourself a favor, grab the Director’s Cut of the first one and sit and really watch it, and then tell me what you think.
