Publication Date: 12-25-2025

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) review

Dir. Richard Donner

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

The Lethal Weapon films consistently know how to start fast; rapidly enough to send you into whiplash. The fourth film — released in 1998, 11 years after the first — opens with a nut-job wielding a flamethrower, setting an entire downtown strip ablaze in the middle of a torrential downpour. Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Riggs (Mel Gibson) arrive on the scene, stealthily stalking the perp while bickering back-and-forth about how to best handle the situation. A dizzying display of hand-to-hand and man-to-vehicle combat ensues, coupled with exchanged gunfire, and before long, Murtaugh is in the middle of the street in his boxers again accosting his longtime partner, who saved his ass once again.

Lethal Weapon 4 has no right to be this damn good. Not after the third film suggested some lethargy in the screenplay department, as it sidelined some of the more human elements in the story to service a plot mired in chaos. Multiple new characters, several returning ones, and a moving undercurrent that acknowledges how Riggs has gone from a suicidal pariah to a man on the verge of having a family shifts this one into overdrive for a finale that brings its own fireworks.

Indeed, that’s one of the big developments. Riggs is going to be a dad, after meeting and falling in love with Lora (Rene Russo). He backs his camper up to her beach-house, and the two have gone from meeting cute to living cute. More great news: Riggs and Murtaugh have been promoted to captains, seeing as the police department can’t purchase new insurance until they got them off the streets due to all the collateral damage they cause. During a fantastic sequence on a house-boat with their favorite loquacious screwball, Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), Riggs and Murtaugh accidentally find a gaggle of Chinese immigrants en route to the United States. This puts them in the crosshairs of Wah Sing Ku (a steely evil Jet Li in his American film debut), a Chinese mob boss, who doesn’t care if tracking down Riggs and Murtaugh means killing the pregnant Lorna by burning her alive.

Also pregnant is Murtaugh’s daughter, Rianne (Traci Wolfe), the one who had a youthful crush on Riggs. It’s not what you think; no need to phone Maury. The father is Detective Lee Butters (Chris Rock), a secret known by everyone except Murtaugh, who would be disgusted to realize his daughter was with a police officer. Rock plays Butters with his trademark vulgar, freewheeling zeal; he’s actually very similar to his apostle character in Kevin Smith’s Dogma, which would be released the following year.

Would you have wagered that Lethal Weapon 4 would’ve included perhaps the best chase scene in the series? Believe it. Like all best chase scenes, it’s set on a freeway, and involves Riggs hopping aboard one of those “Oversized Load” trucks hauling the shell of a home, with thick plastic stapled to its open side, so we can see Riggs go hand-to-hand with one of Ku’s goons while Murtaugh speeds alongside in an unmarked whip. What a thrill it is, elaborate to the point where, as it unfolds, we wonder how it’s even logistically possible.

Hectic, sloppy endings could derail any good movie, but not Lethal Weapon 4. Against all odds, the final pages of Channing Gibson’s screenplay throws us a confluence of events: Riggs committing murder, Riggs nearly drowning, Lorna going into labor, a rabbi marrying both her and Riggs, Butters’ acceptance into the family, and a Chinese family being granted asylum. Oh, and in between all of that, Pesci’s Leo tells Riggs about his pet frog and how him and Murtaugh have been as loyal to him as his childhood pet. It’s a riot.

Beyond the obvious anchoring of Glover and Gibson, Richard Donner directing all four of the Lethal Weapon films is a big reason why they’re all successful in their own ways. It’s a rare bout of consistency when a series can retain the same director for multiple installments, and Donner — whose additional work includes Superman (1978) and The Goonies, to name a few — is the kind of direct whose desire to one-up himself is evident. Lethal Weapon 4 is so bizarrely fantastic that it could’ve been called “Leth4l Weapon” and it still wouldn’t have undercut itself.

My review of Lethal Weapon
My review of Lethal Weapon 2
My review of Lethal Weapon 3

Starring: Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, Rene Russo, Joe Pesci, Chris Rock, Jet Li, and Steve Kahan. Directed by: Richard Donner.