Movies That Changed a Genre — Lethal Weapon

Please be warned — this post contains spoilers for a thirty-some-year-old movie… one that doesn’t rely on surprise or twists but instead on solid characters and good action — but if you care about spoilers for Lethal Weapon you should probably skip it.

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Die Hard gets a lot of press as the movie that made its hero vulnerable, that put aside the trend of giant muscle-bound hero’s who were basically invulnerable.

It came out a year after Lethal Weapon.

Lethal Weapon was the most grounded action flick around until Die Hard, and I would argue that in some ways it is a better movie. Even more grounded, even more real.

Martin Riggs is presented as an ultimate killing machine while John McClane is shown as an everyman… but McClane pulls off things that Riggs doesn’t. In every fight scene, you see Riggs get hurt, you see him get beat down, you see him in pain. I personally know people who can fight to the level we see him at in the movie. Of course, they aren’t also snipers… but that’s part of the character. He’s an ex-soldier and he has the skill set that comes with it. Specifically, he was a sniper in the special forces. That means he’s a damned good shot, but not a killing machine who shrugs off bullets. Getting shot while wearing a bulletproof vest actually knocks him out.

Then there’s the mental aspect. Riggs isn’t okay. He’s not an action hero who just takes it all in. He’s a very broken person. We don’t know if he was broken prior to his wife’s death, but we do know that after her death he is. He is human, suicidal, broken, not eager for death maybe… but definitely courting it, unable to really find a way to manage life and yet unwilling to end things — barely.

A lot of the credit for a vulnerable hero should actually be given to Lethal Weapon.

Then there’s Murtaugh. It’s supposed to be a straight-laced cop with a crazy partner, but it isn’t Murtaugh isn’t straight-laced, he’s just a family man. He’s got joy and happiness in his life, being a cop isn’t his reason for living, it’s the thing that pays for his life. He genuinely is a good cop and a good person, but he isn’t obsessed with police work, he’s not living purely for the job.

He’s also a better cop than Riggs. He’s good at putting clues together, he’s smart in a non-showy sort of way. You can see that he’s good at his job and that he takes it very seriously, even if he isn’t unstable, even if he isn’t a macho hero.

Both of the main characters in Lethal Weapon are revolutionary for the genre. One reason is simply that they are human, they are well rounded and well written. Both of them come off as real people living in the real world.

The scale of the problems are also more reasonable. In the end, the plot is thin but not completely unrealistic. A former military unit that was involved with drug smuggling in Nam is bringing heroin into the US. Two cops find out when the unit kills the daughter of one of the members the unit who is about to go to the cops. He has another daughter so he doesn’t do it.

There’s a lot about it that makes sense. Air America was a real thing, the CIA did smuggle heroin, the CIA did use special forces and mercenaries for this purpose.

There are some other specific pieces of groundedness. Cars get shot and don’t explode (the only car that does explode does so because it was carrying a large number of grenades that end up in a fire). The only other big explosion is actually a house that was blown up by, well, explosives.

To my mind, Lethal Weapon was the start of the vulnerable action hero. The guy who comes through based on grit and courage instead of his ability to shrug off bullet wounds. It might also be the best buddy cop movie ever and treats depression and suicidal thoughts in a serious and caring way.

It’s a thing though… it’s really easy to forget how big a star Mel Gibson was back then. Also how good an actor he was. Yeah, you have to do a bit of separation of artist from art, but if you watch Lethal Weapon now, first, it holds up — second, you understand why Gibson was as big as he was.

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