Lethal Weapon 4

Comment:
Using always the same formula from the original movie to the fourth episode of the saga, watching any Lethal Weapon movie cannot be a very negative experience, we are already used to the main characters, to the humour and to the exasperated action. The episode I preferred was Lethal Weapon 2 because it managed to balance very well the comical parts with the serious moments and the action scenes, something that this fourth episode really doesn't manage to do.

Now the two main characters are becoming older, Riggs (Mel Gibson) is thinking about getting married with Lorna (Rene Russo) who is pregnant and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) will become a grandfather soon. Their family affairs won't prevent them from fighting against some Chinese gangsters that trades with slaves illegally immigrated in the United States. It's useless to say that everything resolves in a positive way for the good guys who manage to defeat the bad Orientals and 'fix' their family businesses.

I found that the basic plot line was quite thin and uninteresting, and the usual car chase sequences, gun fights, explosions and silly jokes couldn't alleviate these feelings. Since the beginning (which is also heavily spoiled by the trailers) it is obvious that exaggeration has no limits in this movie both for the comical and the action side of the events while the realism is heavily neglected. In particular, the car travelling through a building full of tables without suffering any evident damage provides one of the most unlikely car chases I've ever seen in a supposedly realistic movie!

The new character introduced in this episode is the young Detective Butters (Chris Rock) who is quite funny and brings us, together with Joe Pesci, the most amusing dialogue of the movie, criticising the actual usefulness and reliability of mobile phones. All the characters are nice, as usual, although there are probably too many humorous situations which make everybody look excessively like a buffoon.

The finale of the 'action part' is obviously unlikely, the bad guys (and particularly the martial arts expert Jet Li) are defeated only because the good guys must win in a movie like this! The end of the 'family part' is not pitiful and boring as it could have been, which is a fairly positive point. Overall, Lethal Weapon 4 is a movie without many ideas and without many things to say (although it lasts for more than 2 hours), it is just a mediocre comical action movie which will hopefully mark the end of the Lethal Weapon series.