Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

A truly great sequel that expands upon the friendship that was born in the first picture.

Intrepid cop partners Riggs & Murtaugh are on the trail of South African diplomats who are using their diplomatic immunities to engage in criminal activities.

With the success of Lethal Weapon in 1987 it made common sense to follow it with a sequel. All the same elements were in place, cast, director and writers were all back for another slice of buddy buddy action bonanza. The only change of course is the villains, here represented by Joss Ackland & Derrick O'Connor's weasel South African bastardos. Joe Pesci enters the fray as the comical Leo Getz, a Federal Witness that the cop duo have to "babysit" till trial.

Right from the off the tone of the film is set as our ears split and our eyes get dazzled by a high speed car chase. Riggs & Murtaugh are in hot pursuit whilst exchanging a now customary difference of opinion as regards police work. We know they are mates and we know that Riggs is still the lethal weapon and Murtaugh is old school copper. So whilst there's nothing new in that the formula remains the same, the makers do flesh out the relationship more as the film progresses - with one or two scenes absolute gold dust as the boys' lives come under serious threat. We are now, in spite of the carnage that surrounds them, involved with them, yes, such is the charm of their relationship, we do care. It's good writing, regardless of the charges from some quarters that these films are nasty shallow excuses for making money...

It's fair to say that this is Gibson's movie, this is because it's written that way. Some of Riggs' back story is filled in and he even gets a love interest in the slender form of Patsy Kensit. Riggs cracks the jokes and does the outrageous mental stuff, while Glover's (still doing fine work in Gibson's shadow) Murtaugh continues to be the counter opposite, with some of the astute written sequences involving Murtaugh and the South African core of the story being excellently handled by Glover. Regardless of character development and nifty political observations, it's the action that dominates proceedings. Director Richard Donner has a wail of a time putting the cast through their paces. There's explosions, fights, shoot-outs, more high speed pursuits, and on it goes till we get to the finale, and it's a potential cliffhanger one too.

Two more inferior sequels would follow, all of which still made serious money, but this serves notice of the last time that all the elements came together successfully. A stylish Hollywood action comedy with two impressionable lead actors providing a lesson in on screen chemistry success. 7.5/10

Fun sequel with plenty of action and the teamwork between Gibson and Glover was great. Joe Pesci was fine but kind of got a bit annoying. Still highly entertaining all these years later.

"Lethal Weapon 2" has a generous selection of set piece action sequences which usually results in the wholesale destruction of property and all in the name of entertainment. These sequences have been exceptionally well executed and they certainly go towards further enlivening what is an already highly entertaining although not particularly memorable motion picture experience. A lot of the carefully constructed scripting used to establish exactly what is going on is all too eagerly disregarded in favour of the much lazier and undoubtedly the more crowd pleasing option of simply blowing things up or killing a lot of people just for the sake of it. Of course it would be nice if this wasn't always the more commonplace approach in a genre film such as this one.

Flushed with their success from 1987, our intrepid pair of investigators now find themselves embroiled in a cunning smuggling operation being run, they think, out of the diplomatically protected South African consulate. They think this because a previous raid revealed an hoard of Krugerrand and then "Murtaugh" (Danny Glover) and his family were quite unceremoniously warned to leave well alone. It's drugs that are the focus of their investigation but how is that getting converted into millions and millions of dollars and how is it to be got out of the USA? "Capt. Murphy" (Steve Kaplan) assigns him and his sparky cohort "Riggs" (Mel Gibson) to protect "Getz" (Joe Pesci) who might just have some clues, but he also has some great big targets on his back and it soon becomes quite a perilous detail. Meantime, the abominably smug "Rudd" (Joss Ackland) directs affairs from the safety of his mission so "Riggs", ever the unorthodox, decides the best way to bypass immunity is to seduce his secretary "Rika" (Patsy Kensit). With the body count mounting and the bullets flying, they have to get a move on before their quarry flees for good. I didn't think this was a patch on the first outing for these two. Despite a quietly menacing effort from Ackland, the rest of this is all really predictable and flat. Pesci is about as versatile as a chocolate fireguard and his constant stream of banal dialogue just sucked what little joy there was here for me out of the window. There simply isn't enough Glover and Gibson to keep it entertaining, and even though there are plenty of light-hearted action scenes it's all just gone a bit too old style "Starsky and Hutch". The writing has lost much of it's sharpness and originality and the cheeky, likeable, elements of "Riggs" character have been replaced by something more aggressive and less enjoyable. It's watchable, but already the franchise is beginning to look tired and repetitive.