Film Appreciation - Playing Dirty with Riggs and Murtaugh

Cody Hamman cheers down with Film Appreciation for the 1989 film Lethal Weapon 2.

I’m of the opinion that Lethal Weapon 2 is one of the best sequels ever made – and I also feel that it has one of the best opening sequences I’ve ever seen. The first indication that this is going to be a bit of a more light-hearted affair than its predecessor is the sound of Looney Tunes music playing over the Warner Bros. logo. Then the title appears... and straight from the title, we smash to a shot of LAPD detective Martin Riggs, played by Mel Gibson, having the time of his life. The character had been a mess in the previous movie. Mourning the death of his wife in a car accident, he was depressed and suicidal, putting his life at risk in the line of duty, talking about “eating a bullet”, putting loaded weapons to his head, getting accused of being crazy. But then he was assigned to work with fellow detective Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover). He found a great friend, he was welcomed into Murtaugh’s family. With distance from his tragic loss, he’s in a better mood for the sequel. And Lethal Weapon 2 opens with him having a blast during a car chase through the streets of Los Angeles. It also quickly re-establishes his relationship with Murtaugh, because while Riggs is going wild during the chase, getting so hyped up at one point that he even attempts to pursue a car on foot, Murtaugh is stressed out because he’s driving his wife’s new station wagon and doesn’t want it to be damaged. (Rest assured, it will be.)

It’s a great chase sequence that goes on for several minutes. Riggs, Murtaugh, and other officers are in pursuit of two separate vehicles. One of the chases ends with the suspects being picked up and flown to safety by associates in a helicopter. The other ends with the suspect crashing... and Krugerrands, gold coins from South Africa, pouring out of the car’s trunk. This leads us into a very interesting story where Riggs, Murtaugh, and their fellow officers coming to discover that the minister of diplomatic affairs at the South African consulate in L.A. - Joss Ackland as Arjen Rudd - is running a drug trafficking operation they can’t seem to do anything about because he’s able to hide behind diplomatic immunity. This gives foreign government officials legal immunity from the country they’re working in. Once Rudd is aware that the police are suspicious of him, he sends his army of henchmen, led by Derrick O'Connor as Pieter Vorstedt, out to eliminate every cop that knows he’s a criminal. They are successful at wiping out several of Riggs and Murtaugh’s co-workers. And nearly kill our heroes as well.

The story for Lethal Weapon 2 was crafted by returning Lethal Weapon writer Shane Black and pulp fiction novelist Warren Murphy, who is best known for being the co-creator of the Remo Williams character, and the title on their script wasn’t Lethal Weapon 2. It was Play Dirty. But even though Warner Bros. was also behind the Dirty Harry franchise, where every film in the series had a separate title (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, The Dead Pool), they decided not to take that approach to this franchise. So Lethal Weapon 2 it became. Then came rewrites, because returning director Richard Donner had the same problem with Black and Murphy’s script that he had with Black’s script for the first movie: it was too dark and violent. Warner Bros. also wasn’t too pleased that Black and Murphy chose to kill Riggs in the end, since they were working on building a franchise around him and Murtaugh. So Jeffrey Boam, who handled the rewrites on part 1, handled the rewrites on this one as well. He wrote a draft that leaned into action, another draft that leaned into comedy, and then – at Donner’s request – he wrote a third draft that was a blend of action and comedy. Then Robert Mark Kamen was brought in to do some uncredited work on the script, with his focus being on the villains. According to Kamen, he was the one who chose to make South Africa their home country, which allowed Donner to work some anti-apartheid commentary into the film. 

Having a script that was cobbled together by multiple writers has caused major issues for some movies, but somehow it worked out perfectly for Lethal Weapon 2. The story is clever and well-written, it has despicable bad guys for us to root against, the action is awesome, and there are some terrific comedic moments –yet at the same time, the sequel is able to retain some of the dark thrills of its predecessor. It’s funnier, but it hasn’t lost its edge.

The best thing about Lethal Weapon 2 (and this also holds true for the lesser sequels that followed) is just the fact that it allows us to spend more time with Riggs and Murtaugh, characters we had fallen in love with while watching the first film. Gibson and Glover have incredible chemistry with each other, and it’s always a joy to watch them interact, even when the story surrounding their interactions doesn’t hold up as well. Donner also gave them a strong supporting cast to work with, including the aforementioned villains, Steve Kahan as Captain Murphy, and Darlene Love, Traci Wolfe, Damon Hines, and Ebonie Smith, who return as the Murtaugh family. Wolfe’s character Rianne, who was a teenager with a crush on Riggs in the previous film, is now pursuing an acting career... and the fact that she’s featured in a condom commercial is a big source of humor in this movie. Like the first movie, Lethal Weapon 2 is a movie I grew up watching with various family members, and I can still remember my father laughing at several moments in this film. Especially the scenes that make a joke out of Rianne’s condom commercial.

Added to the supporting cast this time around is Joe Pesci as a banker named Leo Getz, a character who ended up having a lot more to do than originally intended. A banker who had a side hustle of money laundering for criminal clients, Leo has been placed in protective custody and Riggs and Murtaugh are supposed to watch over him for a couple days. Coincidentally, Leo also happens to be on Rudd’s hit list, so this separate assignment actually gets Riggs and Murtaugh deeper into the Rudd case, because they’re able to get information from Leo while trying to protect him from Rudd’s goons. Although they’re not very good at the protecting job, because they take Leo around with them on their investigation and get him mixed up in dangerous situations. The banker character only made a brief appearance in the Black and Murphy script, he just had a couple lines, but Boam greatly expanded his role in the story and made him a sort of motormouth, high-strung sidekick to Riggs and Murtaugh. Pesci’s performance as Leo is so entertaining, he ended up being brought back for sequels that the character didn’t even need to be in. But like audiences wanted to see Gibson and Glover interact more, they also wanted to see them share more funny scenes with Pesci.

Riggs is doing so well that he’s even able to pursue a new relationship in this film, hooking up with Rudd’s secretary Rika van den Haas (Patsy Kensit) – and they both seem to fall for each other at rocket speed. This is just a set-up for more tragedy, because while Rika was originally supposed to survive the events of the story, she doesn’t make it through the finished film. And while he’s causing Rika’s death, Pieter Vorstedt reveals this isn’t the first time he was sent out to kill Riggs and someone he cared for became collateral damage. He was meant to kill Riggs a couple years earlier and ran his car off the road... but it turned out that Riggs’ wife was driving. Vorstedt is responsible for the death of Riggs’ wife, he has caused all the pain Riggs has been feeling in recent years. It wasn’t exactly necessary that Mrs. Riggs’ death be retconned as being caused by a villain, but this reveal – along with the death of Rika – makes the destruction of Rudd and Vorstedt a personal mission for Riggs and brings a darkness and intensity to the final moments.

Lethal Weapon 2 is packed with good laughs and cool action sequences, often managing to mix thrills and chuckles into the same moment (like when Murtaugh sits on the toilet to find there’s a bomb strapped to it that will go off if he stands up). The entertainment factor is boosted even further when you mix in the iconic music by Michael Kamen, Eric Clapton, and David Sanborn, an end credits song by George Harrison, and a wonderful ‘80s atmosphere. When you have a movie as awesome as the first Lethal Weapon was, it can be hard for a sequel to live up to it. But somehow Donner and his cast and crew were able to deliver a sequel that is just as strong as the first film. Lethal Weapon ranks among the all-time best action movies, and Lethal Weapon 2 is right up there with it.