Lethal Weapon (1987)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1987
	Director: Richard Donner (Superman, The Goonies, Lethal Weapon 1-4)
	Actors: Mel Gibson (Braveheart, Payback), Danny Glover (Predator 2, Saw), Gary Busey (Point Break, Predator 2)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Polar
	Conditions of visioning: 03.03.2017, VOD, 32" TV screen.
Synopsis: Police officer of 15 years Roger Murtaugh (Glover) has to team up with suicidal Martin Riggs (Gibson) to solve the case of apparent suicide of an old friend's daughter.
Review: Acclaimed director Richard Donner delivered in 1987 this ultimate buddy-cop-movie which equivalents in the following decades could be Bad Boys in 1995 and 21, Jump Street in 2012 (how sad...). The comedy in Lethal Weapon is based on real-life situations and not gags like is more done nowadays, often revolving about the bad mood of Murtaugh who coined the phrases "I am too old for this shit" and "get this shit off my lawn". But apart from those lighter moments that re-enforce the buddy-movie aspect, Lethal Weapon is a serious Polar with its lot of car chases, gunfights and even torture scenes that I probably discovered when I was too young because they make me feel bad when I watch them again now. The movie also shows this Manichean view of the Bad guys / Good guys so typical of the 80's, apart from the character of Riggs which is THE great thing about Lethal Weapon: Mel Gibson's image is forever linked to this unstable character and he plays it very well. We owe that story to Shane Black which has some reputation in Hollywood for giving us Last Action Hero, Kiss kiss bang bang and Iron Man 3. Unfortunately a recent visioning of the movie revealed plenty of annoying traits that I had never noticed before: the music can get exaggeratedly jazzy to emphasize the Polar mood, the Manichean view of the characters tends to be boring after a while, and most importantly I found the editing horrible, rendering totally confusing all the fight scenes and diffusing the tension in the last third of the movie by not highlighting enough the stakes. For me this hectic editing (is the director or the editor Stuart Baird to blame?) costs the movie a higher rating. Still I may watch the sequel Lethal Weapon 2 of which I have a good memory, but probably not the two following ones that just kept on using the same old tricks.
Rating: 5 /10