Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)

DIRECTOR: Richard Donner

CAST:

Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Rene Russo, Joe Pesci, Stuart Wilson, Steve Kahan, Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Mary Ellen Trainor, Nick Chinlund

REVIEW:

With the third time around, Lethal Weapon shows beginning signs of age (although it has not yet worn out its welcome as much as it would by the fourth outing ). Lethal Weapon 3 is entertaining, but it lacks the freshness of the first and second installments, settling into a tried-and-true formula.

Once again, our dynamic duo of daredevil Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and family man Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) stumbles across a criminal enterprise, this time involving an ex cop, Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson), who is stealing from the police department stockpiles of confiscated hardware and putting automatic weapons and armor-piercing bullets back on the streets. With Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), now a real estate agent and self-appointed “partner”, sometimes tagging along for the ride, Riggs and Murtaugh are also joined by Internal Affairs Sergeant Lorna Cole (Rene Russo), between whom and Riggs sparks soon fly.

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover slip back into their roles like old, well-worn, comfortable shoes, but even between them there is the sense that they’re settling a little too much into a routine. Joe Pesci returns as Leo, and has a couple funny scenes (he gets to launch into one of his patented profane tirades, this time about hospitals), but he’s obviously included more as a link to the previous installment than a real relevance to the plot. Stuart Wilson is a generic and ho-hum villain; he’s decidedly a few steps down the bad guy ladder from Lethal Weapon 2‘s Joss Ackland and Derrick O’Connor. Travis is neither imposing nor interesting, and seems more like a nuisance than a worthy adversary. A newcomer who makes somewhat more of an impression is Rene Russo (who, in addition to reprising her role in the 4th installment, would also play Gibson’s wife in 1995’s Ransom). Like Leo in the 2nd film, Lorna is the addition to the cast of characters that brings a new angle (a love interest for Riggs with more longevity than Patsy Kensit’s Rika) and keeps things from being a complete retread of the old buddy-cop formula. From the way Lorna and Riggs butt heads immediately, we know she’s the woman for him, especially when he finds out she’s a fellow devoted fan of The Three Stooges. They also share a scene of scars comparison/one-upmanship that’s kind of like the one in Jaws, only plus sexual tension. Smaller roles like Darlene Love and Traci Wolfe as Murtaugh’s wife and daughter, and Mary Ellen Trainor in an obligatory scene or two as the psychiatrist convinced everyone needs help return, and Steve Kahan as Captain Murphy gets to do slightly more than usual.

Lethal Weapon 3 doesn’t have as many memorable action sequences as Lethal Weapon 2, but it has more than Lethal Weapon or Lethal Weapon 4, with Richard Donner bringing his usual flair to the first and arguably best, a race and fender-bender between two armored cars, and a later wild freeway chase with Riggs on a motorcycle. The climax is suitably loud and over-the-top, but fairly generic. There’s plenty of action-comedy too, such as when Riggs and Murtaugh get busted down to traffic cops, and Riggs watching on besottedly as Lorna displays her own bad guy butt-kicking prowess.

Lethal Weapon 3 delivers all the ingredients of a Lethal Weapon movie, just not quite with the extra pinch of freshness and energy that kicked the first two up a notch. It’s by no means bad, or an insult, it’s just missing that certain something. The movie includes numerous nods, winks, and references in dialogue to events in previous movies, a common lazy tactic of writers when they’re starting to run a little low on new ideas and start to rely on audience affection for the earlier episodes to generate goodwill (Shane Black, who wrote the first two films, was replaced here by Jeffrey Boam). The first signs of creakiness are showing in the series, and too many scenes (especially those with Leo Getz) feel like rehashes of old material, but it falls back on a tried-and-true formula, and it continues to work well enough that the movie is never a chore to sit through. It gets the job done entertainingly, but this would have been a better place to stop than continuing on until the age and redundancy beginning to show here got more obvious.
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