Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Directed by Richard Donner
Riggs and Murtaugh are on the trail of South African diplomats using their immunity to engage in criminal activities.
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What critics compared Lethal Weapon 2 to
Director Adam Wingard does fine work with his first blockbuster (and you just know he’s to credit for the Lethal Weapon 2 nod), but it’s the CG spectacle, monster mayhem, and epic carnage that rule the screen.
(I’m told the creature’s movements were modeled on Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” and there’s even a “Lethal Weapon 2” reference for us elderly folks in the audience.)
The dark saga’s young heroes now bike past movie theater marquees advertising Tim Burton’s “Batman” and “Lethal Weapon 2” as they flee the bullies, monsters, and adults who terrorize them along the dusty backroads of a sunbaked town suffocating under an invisible haze of sickness.
This means that all the Eisenhower-era references have been replaced with Reagan/Bush Sr.-era references—the local movie theater is showing Batman and Lethal Weapon 2, one of the characters has a Gremlins poster on his bedroom wall, and another character tries desperately to hide his admiration for the New Kids on the Block.
But as obnoxiously convoluted as things might get (Sony originally flirted with filming two Bad Boys sequels back-to-back and it shows), there is an intense focus on Mike and Marcus’ relationship that reminded me a little of Lethal Weapon 2 .
In 1989, the same summer Spike Lee dramatized our seemingly unbridgeable differences in Do the Right Thing, Hollywood gave us Lethal Weapon 2, in which an unruly white guy and a middle-class black family man collaborated to destroy the evil representatives of South African apartheid.
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Basically, he’s Joe Pesci from “Lethal Weapon 2,” only, you know, not Italian.
The most interesting thing about the picture is that a mid-film reveal that forgives the casting of Ben Kingsley as arch-villain The Mandarin also reminds a lot of the odious, slapstick Leo Getz/Joe Pesci character from Black's Lethal Weapon 2 script.
Liman and crew consulted the opening scene of Lethal Weapon 2. Thus it seemed logical when Liman became attached to the high-budget, high-profile The Bourne Identity, a culmination of his real moviemaking interests.
If you were around during the writer/director’s heyday, you’ll remember a precocious and sweary teenage daughter from The Last Boy Scout and both hero and villain plummeting into a swimming pool from a top flight hotel room from Lethal Weapon 2 – but these are good elements, so why not reuse them?
Among his credits are “Lethal Weapon,” “Lethal Weapon 2,” “The Last Boy Scout,” “The Last Action Hero,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”