LETHAL WEAPON 3. Directed by Richard Donner; written by Jeffrey Boam and Robert Mark Kamen; produced by Richard Donner and Joel Silver for Warner Bros. Starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Rene Russo and Joe Pesci. Rated R.
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The once fresh and entertaining Lethal Weapon characters are well on their way to becoming cartoons.
They are still fun to watch, and to listen to. And the addition, in this installment, of a different kind of girlfriend for Riggs (Gibson), adds some new spice to the mix.
But if Lethal Weapon 4 can't come up with a stronger storyline than this one, it won't be very entertaining at all.
I'm not going to give you the background of odd couple cops Riggs and Murtaugh (Glover), because if you haven't seen the other two LW's (or at least #2), and aren't familiar with their histories and quirks, then you shouldn't be seeing #3, either. Believe me, this whole movie is practically nothing more than a series of inside jokes for fans of the previous movies.
Of course, there are a lot of those folks out there (myself included) so no doubt LW 3 will he a super-successful summer movie.
The story this time around (if something so flimsy can be called a story) involves stolen guns, bad cops, Murtaugh's impending retirement, and the L.A. real estate market (just trust me, ok?).
Lorna (Russo), an internal affairs cop with a wicked right foot, is the only really original element in Lethal Weapon 3. Her relationship with Riggs is feisty and funny enough to recall the best scenes from long ago, when Riggs and Murtaugh were first coming together as a team.
But although the head bad guy here is despicable enough, he comes nowhere near the super-villain status of, say, Gary Busey in LW 1. This means, of course, that fewer scenes are stolen from the heroes. But it also makes for a less interesting plot.
The champion scene stealer of #2, however, is back, as Pesci reprises his Leo Getz character. His mugging is even more cartoonish than that of his co-stars here, but he's funny enough to carry it off in style most of the time.
June 3, 1992