LETHAL WEAPON
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1987 Jeff Meyer
LETHAL WEAPON tends to be one of those marginal, on-the-border films; its qualities and weaknesses are glaring, and tend to cancel one another out. The story, which is nothing special, centers on an aging family-man police detective (Danny Glover) who is saddled with a series of drug-related crimes and a new partner who is rumored to have a death wish (Mel Gibson). Together they begin to track down the men behind a multi-million dollar drug smuggling operation, which is complicated when members of Glover's family become hostages for the hoods.
With almost anyone else playing the main roles, this would have been a major failure; but Glover and Gibson begin a relationship that somehow transcends the dialogue they've been given (or at least transmutes it into something believable). They form a symbiosis that the movie was no doubt shooting for -- Glover (and family) providing Gibson with something to care about, and an emotional base after the death of his wife, and Gibson providing Glover with a lean, mean, crazy machine who can kill like nobody's business. But it's not due to the script; it's almost as if the two actors pull their characters over their heads and disappear into them. To my mind, Gibson is probably the two or three actors in Hollywood who really fits as an "action-adventure" hero. Eastwood's too old, Bronson was never any good to begin with, Stallone too lifeless, Norris too stupid, and Harrison Ford looks too much like John Fogerty :-). But Gibson -- he provides something behind the eyes to make you think he re- ally might be a psycho, yet he gains sympathy in an early scene where he almost "eats his gun". I loved the sequence where they break out through the disco; Gibson pulls a nonchalant rap as he blows away the three or four goons between himself and the door (to rec.arts.comics readers -- yeah, the parallels between the character and The Badger are really phenomenal). He and Glover are very comfortable in these roles; I remember halfway into this hoping their would be a sequel (it'd be a great basis for a TV series, but no way would you get Gibson into it).
On the other hand, there's the plot. It may not be as inept or as improbable as COBRA or INVASION: USA, but the rest of the film is good enough to make the accompanying story jarring in comparison. Ridiculous plot element is heaped on to ridiculous plot element: the two cops are invited up to a Beverly Hills home of one of the key figures in the drug organization, where an assassination attempt is made; the police aren't going to make the connection if their two detectives disappear during their visit? Fire-fights break out in the most unlikely places. The kidnapping of Glover's daughter makes sense, and she does act as I imagine any average 16-year-old girl would when faced by such a dilemma -- she gets hysterical; but by the end it's almost a pastiche of the Helpless Female role. And nothing, absolutely nothing, could justify the anti-climatic fight scene between Gibson and Gary Busey, the albino-crazed henchman. Pure, unadulterated dumb.
I've tried to come up with a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating for this, but my mind changes every few hours. Let's put it this way: it averages out to a C, but the standard deviation is HUGE.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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