Publication Date: 12-12-2025

Lethal Weapon (1987) review

Dir. Richard Donner

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

You don’t need me to tell you that Lethal Weapon is on the metaphorical Mount Rushmore of buddy-cop movies. That said, you probably need a reminder of why it’s so damn effective.

You can point to a litany of reasons why this kinetically directed, hyper-urgent, and rousingly funny movie is all of those things and more, but I believe one of the biggest keys to its success is writer Shane Black. Black was in his late-twenties when he penned Lethal Weapon, his first script to be written for a major studio. Now that Black has become one of the most respected writers and script doctors in Hollywood — Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys, and The Predator (2018) just some of the standouts on his resume — you can see how Lethal Weapon served as the foundation for a great deal of hallmarks he loves to include.

From buddy pairings to crime plots to a Christmastime backdrop, Black’s wit and propensity to entertain doesn’t even end with the characters he creates nor the dialog he has them spew. It’s also prevalent in the scripts themselves. Consider this lovely nugget in the script for Lethal Weapon:

“EXT. POSH BEVERLY HILLS HOME – TWILIGHT The kind of house that I’ll buy if this movie is a huge hit. Chrome. Glass. Carved wood. Plus an outdoor solarium: A glass structure, like a greenhouse only there’s a big swimming pool inside. This is a really great place to have sex.”

Black’s wit and creative juices spilled onto the pages that served as the basis for a story that Richard Donner (Superman) would bring to life. The cops who are forced to become buddies are Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) and Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson). Murtaugh is a family man who just celebrated his 50th birthday. Riggs is a rebel bachelor who has been on the knife’s edge of suicide ever since his wife was killed in a car accident. The circumstance that brings them together is the mysterious death of a young woman, but I’d rather pivot here from the plot innerworkings, as they’re more-or-less a backdrop to the stars and the situational police business itself.

What do I mean by police business? Well, there are grenades, helicopters, machine guns, a sequence involving Riggs helping a suicidal man off a building in the most abrasive way possible, and don’t forget desert shootouts and a couple of car chases. All in a day’s work. So fascinating is the fact that while Black’s script might lean on the predictable inclusions of the buddy cop movie, he makes the material crackle thanks to the witty interpersonal banter between Glover and Gibson; polar opposite actors and personalities.

Setting this all into motion is Donner, whose directorial style is punchy. Even the “downtime,” involving Riggs joining the Murtaugh family for dinner, and a subsequent scene where the men drink and repair a boat, finds itself as compelling as the action setpieces. In no time, you find yourself attached to these men. Glover is the exceptional anger for a story that surrounds him with nuts, punks, and victims, while Gibson is a Molotov cocktail of manic energy and emotional fragility. He has good reason to be, and we get the sense that part of the reason he wanted to be the cop was the fact that he could break the law while still technically doing the right thing.

The supporting cast rises above the chaos, and proves ancillary to the duo of Glover and Gibson. Gary Busey is your beady-eyed killer; Traci Wolfe plays Murtaugh’s daughter, with a teenage crush on Riggs; and Darlene Love is Murtaugh’s anchor while he is busy holding down the movie itself.

Lethal Weapon is the cream of the crop for the buddy cop genre for good reason. It announced Danny Glover as a full-blown star, Mel Gibson as a heart-throb (remember when?), and Shane Black as one of the immensely talented screenwriters in a new generation in Hollywood that was swiftly getting younger and more dynamic. Worth noting, the following year, Black would serve as a script doctor for the seldom-remembered 1988 action-comedy horror flick Dead Heat with Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo. Far less polished than Lethal Weapon, but still a similar breed of kinetic, wacky, and hilarious, it would make a worthy pairing with Donner’s film.

My review of Lethal Weapon 2
My review of Lethal Weapon 3
My review of Lethal Weapon 4

Starring: Danny Glover, Mel Gibson, Gary Busey, Darlene Love, and Traci Wolfe. Directed by: Richard Donner.