Lethal Weapon (1987)
DIRECTOR: Richard Donner
CAST:
Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Mitchell Ryan, Tom Atkins, Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Mary Ellen Trainor, Steve Kahan
REVIEW:
The first of the popular Lethal Weapon series has more grittiness and less humor than its successors, but it’s a solid launching pad, only surpassed (arguably) by the second installment. In truth, the core of the movie’s (and the series’) success isn’t its police drama or action sequences, but the electric chemistry between stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. There have been many “odd couples” onscreen, but Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh set a bar to which many have aspired but few reached and almost none surpassed. This is a buddy action movie the way it’s properly done. Continue reading
Nighthawks (1981)
DIRECTOR: Bruce Malmuth
CAST: Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Rutger Hauer, Nigel Davenport, Lindsay Wagner, Persis Khambatta
REVIEW:
Nighthawks aims to be an edgy urban crime thriller combining the gritty, street-level action of Baretta or The French Connection with the international intrigue of The Day of the Jackal (in fact, at one point it was originally planned as The French Connection III), but is actually a rather half-baked and shallowly-plotted cops and killers yarn that squanders the underdeveloped potential of its premise.
Continue readingWait Until Dark (1967)
DIRECTOR: Terence Young
CAST: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Jack Weston, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Julie Herrod
REVIEW:
An adaptation of the 1966 play of the same name by Frederick Knott, written for the screen by Robert Carrington and Jane Howard Carrington, Terence Young’s suspense crime caper Wait Until Dark almost succeeds in spite of itself; the plot has more holes than Swiss Cheese, but a slick twisty-turny—-if far from airtight—-script keeps things moving along and reels the viewer in in spite of themselves, assuming they have a decent margin for suspension of disbelief.
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