Review of Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) by Harry W — 20 Sep 2013

After having my standards for the series slightly lowered by some of the disappointment felt by Lethal Weapon 3, I really didn't expect much more from Lethal Weapon 4 than some kickass action, and maybe a decent joke here and there.

I love how it immediately kicks off into high voltage action with plenty of fire, explosions and many bulletstorms at a constant and strongly climactic rate, and that's before there is 10 minutes of progress in Lethal Weapon 4, so its easy to predict as going to be good. It immediately fills itself full of cheap but effective humour for its various characters and brings it to an action comic book feel as its full of cartoonish moments and high voltage action, as well as separating the four characters into essentially two hilarious duos, namely the classic Mel Gibson and Danny Glover duo, but this time the new addition of Chris Rock teamed up with a freshly funnier than ever before in Lethal Weapon films Joe Pesci, and the two share an impeccable chemistry with various hilarious moments with each other and other characters due to the strongly over-the-top line delivery. They just all work really well, and despite not having the funniest script of the Lethal Weapon series, they all deliver the necessary laughs even though it descends into routine and predictability without any real hint of drama save from Lorna Cole becoming pregnant. Rene Russo gave a decent performance in the role, but more for a comedic sense so there was no real feel for drama and so she really didn't have much to work with, or get in on the action because her character was pregnant. But the action truly overshadows it all, and features well-choreographed fights and shootouts matched with an intense amount of blood and gore. Jet Li is also awesome to have on board for the sake of the action. The entire cast is awesome.

Anyway, the atmosphere in Lethal Weapon 4 is consistently intense and the musical score is strong in ensuring that, so Richard Donner has clearly lost none of his touch as a director as he still maintains great tenacity in handling Lethal Weapon 4, which is no problem for him as he delivers the same grace as director which made it an awesome series in the first place.

Once the awesome action from the intro slows down however, Lethal Weapon 4's momentum goes into a rapid decline. This is because the action is so high voltage, so fast, so immediate, that when it becomes briefly absent the pacing suddenly drops and viewer's interest cannot be held unless there is sufficient humour on screen. And since the standards for humour are set relatively high, it's difficult for Lethal Weapon 4 to achieve this. It does it fairly consistently, but the scenes where it fails to are somewhat memorable unfortunately.

But overall Lethal Weapon 4 is a fine film technically, is entertaining, and has plenty of awesome action which overshadows its issues.