Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

Riggs and Murtaugh, both feeling too old for the proverbial, try to stop the Chinese Triads from doing their business in the U.S. Uncle Benny, Chinatown's mob boss, has imported Chinese slaves to pay for an artist to create counterfeit Chinese currency which the Triads will use to buy the Four Fathers back from the Chinese military...After the second film, the makers took the grittiness of the first two away, and decided that a comic book element needed to be added, because Black was/is the king of one liners, and many found this to be the endearing factor of the wonderful chemistry the two leads have.There was no doubt that this was going to be a success, it's Lethal Weapon, and the characters are like everyday people, and over the years that the films have been released, we have grown to love them.And whilst the film goes through the Lethal Weapon motions, the title seems irrelevant now, because Riggs is more placid now, but to show he still has that 'dark' side, the makers get him to act like a fool during the set pieces, rather than him becoming unhinged.The action is very impressive, there are a lot of laughs, and the whole film feels like one last family reunion before everyone parts company.The story is complete tosh, Li, in his Hollywood debut, is wasted in his role, he just spends the entire amount of his screen time looking slightly perplexed. Rock is the newcomer, and does a really good job in an otherwise worthless sub-plot, and Pesci, a wonderful actor, turns it up to eleventy stupid, and ruins every scene that he's in, even the heartfelt goodbye at the end.But it's Lethal Weapon, and everyone knows it raised the bar in the 'Buddy Cop' genre. Many have tried to mirror it's charm (hello Rush Hour) but failed miserably.Not the send off I would have liked, but it could have been a whole lot worse.

Riggs and Murtaugh are back in "Lethal Weapon 4, which thankfully gets the franchise back on track after the misfire of "lethal weapon 3"Plot In A Paragraph: With old age creeping up on them, Riggs (Gibson) and Murtaugh (Glover) face personal problems whilst they do battle with some Chinese triads.I'll get what I don't like out the way first. There is an awful use of stunt doubles which are glaringly obvious when watching this on Blu-ray. Chris Rock, whilst OK. Seemed to be just doing his stand u routine through most of his time on screen. And Murtaugh saying "please let him be black" when referencing his grandchilds father, bothers me a lot more than it probably should have. I've never been a fan of that type of humour!! It's OK for Glover to say it cos he's Black, but if Gibson had have said "Please let him be white" all hell would have broken loose over racism!! Especially after what followed!! But hey ho!! That's just me, and it probably doesn't bother many other people. Now onto the good. It is always good to see Gibson and Glover together on screen as Riggs and Murtaugh, as they have a real chemistry together. I wonder how their friendship is now, I don't recall Glover speaking publicly about "those tapes" and think it would be a shame if they no longer got on. It is nice to see Rene Russo back and after his awful role in 3, I loved Joe Pesci's turn here, especially the scene at the cemetery at the end of the movie. Jet Li is brilliant and is the deadliest and best villain of the franchise in my opinion, he is a definite step up from Travis in Lethal Weapon 3.One of my favourite things about the Lethal Weapon franchise is the cast. It has not changed throughout the four movies. Aside from Gibson and Glover as Riggs, Darlene Love plays Murtaugh's wife, Traci Wolfe, Damon Hines, and Ebonie Smith are Murtaugh's kids, Steve Kahan (who I forgot to mention was also in Conspiracy Theory) is Captain Murphy, and Mary Ellen Trainor is the police psychiatrist. This is the final film in which composer Michael Kamen composed the music for producer Joel Silver. Kamen would pass away from multiple sclerosis in 2003.Lethal Weapon 4, ended things on a high with $130 million grossed at the domestic box office to end the year the 11th highest grossing movie of 1998.

An R rated sit-com, oh sorry, an R rated action sit-com. Clichéd comedy, tired stunt scenes, everyone just mails it in from their trailers'. The only thing missing from this movie would be a ghost or a talking baby its so silly and hackneyed. Every moment telegraphed to the audience long in advance, joke coming up here your next left, two rights from now comes a fight scene. Let us lament the fortune spent so we might see this movie. Oh well we could have built a house, or a bridge, could have built a park maybe have some bike trails for that park, could have saved some inner city school from failure, could have provided quality dentistry to impoverished hillbillies-oh yeah could have spent that money on making a better movie.

Hello readers to my review on the fourth and last film of the Lethal Weapon series. In this review I will rank the film and tell you where it stands out of the 4 as I have with the previous films on their reviews written by myself. So lets start, Lethal Weapon 4 is very enjoyable but due to me liking the first installment a bit more I had to rank this one 3rd out of 4. I mean in actual fact I like the first and the last the same but there are just some things about the 1st which make it better than this one. Like number 3 this one has a really under rated score on this website, a 6.5 is way too low. But like I say films in the 6's usually are under rated. Anyway I like the fact that this film went all Chinese to give Martin/Mel Gibson and Roger/Danny Glover a new and greater challenge. Leo Getz played by Joe Pesci "getz" his best performance in any of the films with showing his true soft side at the end. The film ends perfectly and happily which is just what I like. So end my reviews on the Lethal Weapon films, be sure to check out further reviews or previous ones. See you soon...