Lethal Weapon: A Timeless Masterpiece of Buddy Cop Cinema

Nearly four decades after its blockbuster theatrical run launched a franchise, the quintessential “buddy cop” movie — 1987’s Lethal Weapon — remains a timeless masterpiece of action cinema. The buddy cop genre existed before Lethal Weapon; in fact, it was first pioneered another four decades before Lethal Weapon came along. Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 noir Stray Dog featured a mismatched detective duo.

48 Hrs., Freebie and the Bean, and In the Heat of the Night updated the Stray Dog formula for a modern American audience and established the genre’s ability to explore racial tensions in the United States through uneasy police-adjacent partnerships. But Lethal Weapon nailed down the blend of high-octane set-pieces and witty banter that makes this subgenre the perfect intersection of action and comedy.

Lethal Weapon Remains A Thrilling Action Comedy

It’s been almost 40 years since Lethal Weapon exploded into theaters, but it remains a pitch-perfect action comedy. The combination of Richard Donner’s sharp, focused direction, Shane Black’s smart, droll writing, and Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s electric on-screen chemistry all come together to make Lethal Weapon one of the greatest action films ever made. (I’m throwing out a lot of superlatives and hyperboles, but they’re warranted.)

Lethal Weapon was the original Christmas action movie. Just over a year before John McClane would spend Christmas Eve fending off the terrorist siege of an office building, Lethal Weapon opened with a “Jingle Bell Rock” needle-drop and introduced its hero in a shootout at a Christmas tree lot.

When you go back and watch a lot of action movies from Lethal Weapon’s era, they feel really slow and tame and unexciting. We’ve been spoiled by years of Bayhem, Bourne-style shakycam, and bombastic John Wick stunt choreography, so a movie like Tango & Cash just doesn’t scratch the itch anymore. But Lethal Weapon is still thrilling (and hilarious) today.

Today’s big-budget studio action movies have gotten overlong and overcomplicated. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is two great action sequences buried under three hours of interminable exposition about the A.I. villain’s plan. But Lethal Weapon is refreshingly uncomplicated. Its plotting is just complex enough to continually raise the stakes; the machinations of the plot never overshadow the characters or the emotional core.

Riggs & Murtaugh Are The Ultimate Buddy Cop Duo

Lethal Weapon’s central duo of Martin Riggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Glover) are the quintessential example of a buddy cop pairing, because they’re polar opposites. Murtaugh is a suburban family man with a sensible head on his shoulders, while Riggs is a childless widow on the brink of a nervous breakdown, living in a dilapidated trailer on the beach.

Murtaugh is a few days away from retirement, looking forward to settling down into a peaceful life of leisure with his wife and kids, while Riggs is a young, up-and-coming hotshot, eager to die on the job. And yet, despite their differences, as they investigate a drug-smuggling ring and get to know each other, they connect on a deeper level and become the best of friends.

These became the definitive archetypes for the buddy cop genre going forward — Riggs and Murtaugh are still the template to this day — but most of the writers copying their dynamic lack Black’s wit. Black is the best action writer in Hollywood; he would go on to pen near-flawless scripts like The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Nice Guys, and Lethal Weapon originated that formula.

The real power of Lethal Weapon is its ability to hit you in the feels. It’s funny and action-packed, but it also packs a real dramatic punch. By the end of the film, Murtaugh has welcomed Riggs into his own family, like Del Griffith in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (which this also predates), and it’s a beautiful emotional payoff. Ultimately, this isn’t a movie about drug traffickers; it’s a platonic love story.

Gibson and Glover’s on-screen dynamic is endlessly watchable. They have a natural, effortless rapport, and their comic timing is perfectly in tune, whether they’re playing good-natured bickering or a flustered screaming match. Across all three sequels, this chemistry remained. Even as the scripts got sloppier, Gibson and Glover were always having a blast in these roles, and they were always a blast to watch.

Lethal Weapon's Practical Stunts Have Aged Like A Fine Wine

When Donner directed Superman: The Movie, he pioneered groundbreaking visual effects to bring the comic book spectacle to life and make his audience believe a man can fly. But when he directed the Lethal Weapon movies, he grounded them in the real world with a focus on practical stunt work.

This was before CGI was being used for everything. If the script called for a character to be hit by a car, then a stunt performer would be hit by a car for real. If the script called for a building on stilts to fall down the side of a mountain, then they would destroy a hillside home for real.

CGI effects tend to look dated and unconvincing just a few years after they’re committed to film, because the technology quickly advances beyond them. But the practical action sequences of a movie like Lethal Weapon, with real stunts and real danger, will never get old.

Will Lethal Weapon 5 Ever Happen?

There’s been talk of reuniting Gibson and Glover for a fifth Lethal Weapon movie since sometime in the mid-to-late 2000s, but it’s been stuck in development hell all that time. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, a version of Lethal Weapon 5 entitled Lethal Finale came close to being made, as Gibson, Glover, and Donner were all interested in returning.

When Donner passed away in 2021, it cast doubt on whether Lethal Finale would ever get made. But it was apparently still going forward, with Gibson himself taking over as director. Last summer, Gibson gave an update on Lethal Weapon 5, saying it was the best script of the entire series and that it was still in the works despite the holdup.

It still remains to be seen whether we’ll get another Lethal Weapon movie, but the 1987 original still holds up as one of the finest action films ever made. Lethal Weapon 2 is a worthy sequel, and while Lethal Weapon 3 and 4 didn’t quite reach the same heights, they were still wildly entertaining action comedies.