Every time I
think about Lethal Weapon, I remember the intro from this film. I’ve seen many
movies over the years with intros that could be called classics. One I
particularly remember is from the 2012 film Django Unchained.
“Spoiler
Alert” Back to this classic intro—it’s not every day you watch a movie
where the lead actors, intended to be the heroes, bring down a building instead
of waiting for the bomb squad to do their job.
Rene Russo’s
introduction in the movie was well-received. It was refreshing to see someone
else swing kicks and throw punches instead of leaving all the action to Mel.
Richard Donner also kept Joe Pesci in the cast, even though he wasn’t part of
the original script. I enjoyed seeing Leo Getz run his mouth non-stop. To me, Lethal
Weapon 3 had more comedy than any of the others, and it felt like the series
from 1 to 3 was well-planned. In contrast, Lethal Weapon 4 felt a little
off—more like a "let’s cash in some more" effort.
In this movie,
our two heroes are demoted to street duty, and they’re so chaotic in the role
that it seems safer keeping them as detectives. The villain here is bold,
intelligent, and merciless. Jack Edward Travis (Stuart Wilson), a former LAPD
lieutenant, has become an arms dealer running his operations smoothly—until
some of his men make the mistake of committing a crime while Murtaugh and Riggs
are on the scene.
As the
investigation unfolds, the duo meets Lorna Cole (Rene Russo) from Internal
Affairs. She’s tough, smart, and the only woman in the series who can handle
Riggs. The duo, now a trio, goes all out to bring Travis down.
Lethal Weapon 3
was a commercial success, though it received mixed reviews. Once again, the
score was done by Michael Kamen, Eric Clapton, and David Sanborn, who also
worked on the previous two films.
This is my third favorite in the series, but the intro is my absolute favorite. Richard Donner did a fantastic job with the characters created by Shane Black. I have to give him kudos because this series, in my opinion, should be left where it is. A remake or continuation could ruin it—just like what happened with Die Hard 5. If you drag it out, you wreck it. But as you can guess, studios love money more than common sense.
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