Watching Lethal Weapon 4 is a bit like spending two hours with friends you have not seen in a while. In fact , the producers should have released this movie on the fourth of July. Why? Because you do the same things you would during an independence day party with family: chat about old times , complain about the clock gaining on you and trash a few things after having too much to drink. To me , and perhaps many others of my generation , Riggs and Murtaugh are like old pals that we grew up with.
There are many franchises in Hollywood but the Lethal Weapon series is the one I grew up on. So I hope you will forgive this reviewer for not being as impartial as he should be. I was not there for the birth of the Bond franchise , Friday the 13th or Freddy franchises but I was definately there for the first Lethal Weapon. Thus , when you consider all the movies that I want to see at the top of the box office this summer...I guess you could say LW4 my sentimental favorite.
I'd like to start of this review by saying that you should not let the trailers fool you. The scene , you know which one I mean , that you have all seen a dozen times in the trailers caught me off guard. I had seen it many times and , quite frankly , it was starting to bore me. Let me tell you , what you see in the promos is only half of this scene. There is even more to the explosion that what you might think.
With that out of the way , LW4 is the second best movie I have seen this summer. Mind you , number one is The Truman Show and that is hard to beat. The X-Files is third on my list. I have a feeling The Mask of Zorro is the only real threat to this list's order. Anyway , LW4 is not the best in the series , it's not even second best. It's not as bad as three ( which was still pretty damn good , mind you ) but not as good as two.
What really restrains this movie from becoming great is the plot. We all know that LW4 was rushed through production to fill the void left by Superman this summer , so it's kind of hard to know who to blame for this. Don't worry too much , the movie's story is still good , better than I expected after reading so many bad reviews , but it lacks the edge of the previous installments and sometimes takes the easy way out.
Examples?
The bad guy this time is Jet Li. Wanna know why he's called Jet? Cause he moves at Mach 5 , that's why! And for somebody who as never played a bad guy , well , he's pretty darn scary at times. ( Major spoilers follow , look away if you do not want to know , something wicked this way comes...boogie boogie boogie!...sorry...)
However , the problem with such good and nearly invincible bad guys ( hell , even our heroes say they can't beat him ) is that filmakers will almost always kill them is the cheapest possible way. Just before the final confrontation between our heroes and Jet , Riggs and Murtaugh actually think that maybe they should just walk away from this one. ( I know , I know...it does not sound like them but wait until you have seen the movie and it will all make sense )
So , at the last possible moment and after and lengthy ass whupping , Mel Gibson just happens to find a fallen machine gun and proceeds to fill our bad guy full of lead. Can anybody say cheap? Luckily , the just mentioned ass whupping makes up for this lackluster ending. Ever feel like the Lethal Weapon series as gone soft? That it's not as violent as the first two flicks? Fear not , this three way battle makes up for all of it.
Before we get to some major praise , I must mention the only other thing that bothered me about LW4. I believe it is called Mortal Kombat syndrome , in other words: too many characters too fast. Chris Rock's role is so damn small that I really do not understand what his name is doing next to the real stars. He is there for less than ten minutes , never really does anything , never really says anything except for one funny scene with Joe Pesci...heck , they could have cast an unknown and it would not have made much of a difference.
Rene Russo is fine and her presence never really bothered me , however , in this one she becomes a useless sub-plot instead of the ass kicking broad we came to love in LW3. Joe Pesci , while laugh out loud funny , is given wayyyyy too much screen time. I went to see the boys , Riggs and Murtaugh.
All this aside , LW4 is the funniest of the LW series. If you have not seen the previous ones you will miss several insider jokes. The end credits are the most orginal thing I have seen in a while , instead of the usual scrolling credits we get a photo album filled with pictures of the cast and crew. While quite nice , it felt too much like a goodbye rather than an ending and got me thinking that this could really be the last LW.
The action scenes are quite spectacular and never did I feel the need to scream out "Oh come on!!!!" because this is Riggs and Murtaugh and we expect these kinds of things from them. Anybody walking in expecting the opposite will hate this movie. It's not as over the top as , say , Armageddon. Armageddon was one big stunt while LW4 as to make the most of several smaller stunts.
All in all , Mel and Danny were born to work together , Pesci is still funny as Leo "okay okay okay" Gets , Chris Rock is the living definition of redundant , Rene Russo is just there for the ride and Jet Li rules whenever he is on screen.
Rating: 4 stars out of five for the chance to hang out with the boys one more ( last? ) time , a weak script , the best villain of the year ( the iceberg does not count ) , the chance to play Where in the movie is Chris Rock? and the best fight scene in recent memory.
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