Lethal Weapon: A Review of Sorts

It’s hard to fault a film that starts with a smoking hot coked out naked blond chick back splashing onto a car from her penthouse suite.  So I won’t.

Lethal Weapon almost single-handedly atones for the otherwise unforgivable decade that was the eighties.

At the heart of Lethal Weapon is Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), and to say that Riggs is kinda dark is like saying Kevin Spacey is kinda weird and creepy.  The guy’s wife died, and he’s struggling with that a bit, but man is he cool.  He’s so cool I didn’t mind the fact that I had to see his naked hindquarters when he woke up in his dilapidated old trailer in the desert.

Pause.

Riggs is the man though.  How much the man, you might ask?  Well, when Pixels to Polys poster extraordinaire Matt dressed up as him (see picture above) this past weekend women at the party begged him for the right to suck his dick.  Matt, however, declined all offers, opting rather to stay in character he spent the majority of the night in a corner weeping openly about his dead wife, even though numerous partygoers swore that he has never been married.  Imagine how potent the Riggs charm must have been in a direct dose 20 years ago at the time of its inception.

In the films best scene Riggs walks into the line of fire of a sniper asking him if he only shoots kids before blasting him in the grill piece with his handgun.

Then it becomes the premier buddy-cop picture, although, unfortunately for Danny Glover, the scene that sticks out the most for him is the one in which his whole family comes into the bathroom while he is in the tub.  There are not enough suds, and I’m pretty sure his kids must all be able to see his bits (must have been acceptable family behaviors in the 80’s).

In the films dramatic conclusion Riggs and Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) have a dramatic karate-brawl showdown underneath the streaming fountain of a broken fire hydrant: this would all be very gay if it wasn’t so awesome.  The fight is epic, and Murtaugh is somehow able to get a massive police force to hold off, allow this ridiculous fight to happen, and not just arrest Mr. Joshua simply by saying “I accept full responsibility for this... let ‘em go at it.”

Riggs’ expert use of the leg scissors is featured here, and I don’t have to tell you that the better man wins.  

Conclusion: Lethal Weapon is greatness (I think I undersold how cool Danny Glover is in it).