LETHAL WEAPON II
A film review by William December Starr
Copyright 1989 William December Starr
In answer to someone's query ("Is LETHAL WEAPON II really as bad as that Starr guy says it is?"), a few people have more or less recommended it, the gist of their postings being that it was a lot like the first LETHAL WEAPON only more so, so if you liked the first one you'd like the second one.
Well, I sort of liked LETHAL WEAPON back when I rented and watched it about a year ago. It was kind of wahoo, but what the hell, the plot mostly held together and I liked the haunted, desperate, crazed and seriously depressed Riggs (Mel Gibson) and the contrast between him and the family man Murtaugh (Danny Glover).
So why didn't I like -- nay, why did I *detest* the sequel? Lots of reasons, most of which I won't go into here because (a) I want to keep this short and (b) in order to accurately categorize them I'd have to see the damn movie over again, and I'm not getting paid enough for this to do that. So, the bottom line ... by the numbers, I detested LETHAL WEAPON II because:
1. Of all the major events in the movie, virtually *none* of them could possibly have taken place in or near the City of Los Angeles, the State of California, the United States of America, or the planet Earth in or near the year AD 1989.
2. The creators, writers, producers etc. of this movie could not possibly *not* have known that the alleged story they were filming was completely incoherent, illogical, ridiculous, preposterous and a whole lot of other words too, yet they went ahead and shot it (not literally, alas), edited it, made thousands of copies of it, promoted it, distributed it and then -- and this is the part that's gotten me angry -- they foisted it off on me and conned me into paying them six dollars and investing two hours of my life under the mistaken impression that I was going to be cinematically told a *story*
3. The bottom line, and the reason I'm so ripped about this, is that the bastards *ripped me off*. The promised me a *movie*, a story told in moving pictures and sounds. . . but all they gave me was a collection of about a hundred and fifty thousand pieces of 35mm celluloid spliced together and wound up on a reel.
[And, Special Bonus Point #4, Free With This Flame. . .]
4. The scum are *getting away with it* If this was some dumb who-cares "The Deathstalking Blademaster Vs. The Lost Barbarian City of Glort-Splert, Part VII" flick that shows up in the city's lowest-grade theaters, plays for about a week and then goes straight into the video market, I wouldn't be so upset. But this cinematic abortion is raking in money hand over fist, professional critics who should know better are giving it thumbs up instead of reserving it a place on their Ten Worst Films of 1989 lists, and the bastards who made this film, and everyone else who's in the movie business for no reason other than the love of money, are learning the Golden Lesson of LETHAL WEAPON II:
--> Throw enough flash and glitter and slo-motion stuntwork and --> cardboard villains -- the scummier the better -- at the audience --> and they won't *care* whether it's garbage or not; they'll just --> *beg* you to take their money away.
And the film industry will move another step away from quality and innovation and another step towards recycled garbage and Lowest Common Denominator movies and. . . oh hell, you've already heard all this from people who really *care* about cinema, from Siskel and Ebert (on their good days) and from Harlan Ellison, who on his worst day can outwrite and outreview anyone in the business, and from lots of others, and none of it makes any difference when the Fakers and the Takers (as opposed to the Makers) crank up their magic publicity machines and start harvesting the money.
Look, if you want to see LETHAL WEAPON II, go see it. Just don't say I didn't warn you. -- William December Starr, Northeastern U. Class of '90 (Poly Sci/pre-law) wdstarr%charon.local@charon.mit.edu (If that doesn't work, try either wdstarr%lynx@northeastern.edu or wdstarr@lynx.northeastern.edu)
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