Retro Cinema: Lethal Weapon 3

Watching Lethal Weapon 3 in the middle of this season full of big, bloated "threequels," it almost looks quaint. It's also -- and again, this might be due to the dreary current state of the summer blockbuster -- somewhat better than I remembered. Somewhat.

Don't get me wrong, it's a hot mess. They tried to cram way too much into this movie, which is why you get a lot of scenes of Riggs and Murtaugh coincidentally standing next to crimes as they break out. There's not a whole lot of police work going on here. Basically, wherever Riggs and Murtaugh are hanging out -- action will materialize. Witness the unbelievably unbelievable scene where Murtaugh takes Riggs to a hamburger stand and gets behind the counter to make him the world's best hamburger. Why is this scene in there? So our boys can "stumble" upon a crime in progress -- right in the middle of Los Angeles' notoriously dangerous "Hamburger Stand District." It's all pretty damn lazy.

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover should teach a class in chemistry. Their natural, lovable work remains the real draw of the series. These guys could play these roles in their sleep, and indeed there's a bit less spark in their performances this time around. The Riggs character continues his unfortunate watering down, but Glover is given a little more to chew on outside of running around yelling "Riggs!" The "8 days from retirement" bit is beyond played out, but having Murtaugh deal with aging works well for the film. Scenes like the one where Murtaugh accidentally fires his weapon in a locker room and Riggs covers for him are pretty touching.

In a somewhat shaky plot development, we've got our heroes trading personality traits halfway through the film. This time out, Murtaugh is depressed, drinking, and off-balance, while Riggs plays father figure. It's a testament to Gibson and Glover that scenes like the one where Riggs finds Murtaugh drunk on a boat and they fight work as well as they do. The sequence really walks the line of cringe-worthy, but Gibson and Glover find the truth in the scene, and bring it to a fairly emotional resolution. These guys need each other. The difference is, in the original that revelation was left to the audience, and was hard-won. When it happens here, it feels more like a studio head said "Throw in some of that 'needing each other' crap, audiences love it!"

This installment got one thing inarguably right -- the casting of Rene Russo as Lorna Cole. Russo is so effortlessly fine in these "hero's girlfriend" roles that she played seemingly all of them in the 90s. You can argue with the need for the Riggs character to even have a love interest, but you can't argue with Russo. She makes a difficult character -- one who has to be both one of the guys and one of the girls -- look easy. One complaint -- the scene where Cole and Riggs compare battle scars is fun, but would it have killed Russo to take something off? We get Mel standing around in his briefs, couldn't they have thrown the fellas a little something? You've got the 'R' rating, at least give me a bra shot!

The film just feels like a collection of random scenes. It never really comes together as a whole, and nothing seems thought out. Riggs and Murtaugh accidentally blow up a building as the film begins, and are demoted to patrolmen. There's a funny scene where they harass a jaywalker, but they're pretty much back to their old jobs in about five minutes. Why the Police Academy detour? Probably because it's a funny sight gag to see them in the uniforms.

I made the case yesterday that Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) should have been brought into the Lethal series later. His involvement here feels mighty forced. Why would they still be hanging out with this guy? Why did he become a realtor? Why would Murtaugh trust Getz to sell his house? Isn't it a little convenient that Getz only takes jobs that happen to directly connect to the cases Riggs and Murtaugh tackle? Oh well -- he's funny!

The "villain" in LW3 is an ex-cop named Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson). And what a pathetic excuse for a villain he is. In researching the film, I caught an Amazon review that referred to the bad guy in Lethal Weapon 3 as the best Lethal Weapon villain since the one in...Lethal Weapon 2. Well...I'll give him that! The dude is a slightly annoyed housing developer! Not quite the stuff of high drama. Maybe this is what gave Bryan Singer the genius idea to have the plot of Superman Returns hinge on real estate. We're not even sure this guy deserves to die, that's how lame a villain he is. To make matters worse, director Richard Donner apparently became strongly anti-gun around this time, and thus we get some obnoxious moralizing uneasily juxtaposed with scenes of our heroes blowing Travis' crew of goons away. "This guy's selling guns to people! Guns are bad! We should totally shoot him to death! With our guns!"

In the worst example of this anti-violence sermonizing, Murtaugh at one point shoots a gang banger who turns out to be one of his son's friends. This leads to the film's most ill-advised sequence -- a funeral scored to Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday," complete with the boy's mother slapping Murtaugh, and a priest (or something) giving him a speech about finding the man who put the gun in the boy's hands. Really? In a series this violent, you're going to give us this? You can almost imagine Joel Silver, sitting atop an enormous pile of money and big-breasted women, rubbing his hands together and saying "Gang violence is hot right now! Let's get some of that Boyz N the Hood cash!" This whole subplot doesn't gel with the movie at all, especially surrounded by scenes like the one where Joe Pesci rants and raves about having his pubic hair shaved. You can't have it all, fellas.

I discussed screenwriter Jeffrey Boam in yesterday's review of LW2. It's worth noting here that the writing credits for this film read as follows: "Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam and Jeffrey Boam & Robert Mark Kamen." This was some sort of ridiculous Writer's Guild snafu -- it seems Boam wrote one draft alone, one draft as half of a partnership. This is the first time I've seen that credit, I got a good laugh out of that one. Further research shows that the Warner Brothers advertising department assumed it was a typo and removed one of the "Jeffrey Boams" from the posters. The WGA stood by the credit and ordered the original posters removed and destroyed. Long story short, if you enjoyed this movie, you can thank Jeffrey Boam and...Jeffrey Boam.

That Lethal Weapon 3 keeps so many balls in the air is sort of impressive. Unfortunately, in trying to do so much, nothing particularly satisfies, and nearly all of the investment I had in the series starts to wane here. I haven't seen LW4 since it was in theaters, but from what I remember, it takes all the worst aspects of LW3 and stretches them even further. I'm curious to see how it holds up tonight. Until tomorrow...