Lethal Weapon 2

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Lethal Weapon 2

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Richard Donner[1]
Produced by Richard Donner
Joel Silver
Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
Story by Shane Black
Warren Murphy
Based on Characters by
Shane Black
Starring
Music by Michael Kamen
Eric Clapton
David Sanborn
Cinematography Stephen Goldblatt
Edited by Stuart Baird
Production
company
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release dates
  • July 7, 1989 (1989-07-07)
Running time
 Theatrical Cut:
114 min.
Director's Cut:
118 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $25 million
Box office $227,853,986

Lethal Weapon 2 is a 1989 American buddy cop action film directed by Richard Donner, and starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci , Patsy Kensit, Derrick O'Connor and Joss Ackland. It is a sequel to the 1987 film Lethal Weapon and second installment in the Lethal Weapon series.

Gibson and Glover respectively reprise their roles as L.A.P.D. officers, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, who protect an irritating federal witness (Pesci), while taking on a gang of South African drug dealers hiding behind diplomatic immunity. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing (Robert G. Henderson). The film received mostly positive reviews and earned more than $227 million worldwide.

Plot

One year after the events of Lethal Weapon, LAPD sergeants Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh are pursuing unidentified suspects transporting an illegal shipment of gold krugerrands. The Afrikaner apartheid government of South Africa subsequently orders Los Angeles consul-general Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland) and security agent Pieter Vorstedt (Derrick O'Connor) to warn both detectives off the investigation; they are reassigned to protecting an obnoxious federal witness, Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), after an attack on Murtaugh's home.

It soon becomes clear that both cases are related: After an attempt on Getz's life, Riggs and Murtaugh learn of the former's murky past laundering funds for vengeful drug smugglers. Getz eventually leads them to the gang, but upon dispatching his would-be assassin and returning with backup they are confronted by Rudd, who invokes diplomatic immunity on behalf of his unscrupulous "associates."

Though instructed to leave the case alone, Riggs begins to openly harass the South African consulate, defying Rudd and romancing his secretary, Rika van den Haas (Patsy Kensit), a liberal-minded Afrikaner who despises her boss and his racial philosophy. Vorstedt is dispatched to murder all of the officers investigating them while Murtaugh deduces that Rudd is attempting to ship funds from his smuggling ring in the United States to Cape Town via Los Angeles Harbor. Two assassins attack Murtaugh at his home, but he kills them in the ensuing fight, though Getz is abducted in the process.

After killing several police officers, Vorstedt seizes Riggs at the van den Haas apartment and discloses that he was responsible for the death of Martin's wife years earlier during a botched assassination attempt on Riggs. He succeeds in drowning Rika, but a vengeful Riggs manages to escape. He phones Murtaugh, declaring an intention to pursue Rudd and avenge their fallen friends; the other policeman willingly forsakes his badge to aid his partner. After rescuing Getz and destroying Rudd's house, they head for the Alba Varden, Rudds' freighter docked in the Port of Los Angeles, as the South Africans prepare their getaway with hundreds of millions in drug money.

While investigating a guarded 40 foot cargo container at the docks, Riggs and Murtaugh are locked inside by Rudd's men. They break out of the box, scattering two pallets of Rudd's drug money into the harbor in the process. Riggs and Murtaugh engage in a firefight with some of Rudd's men aboard the Alba Varden before separating to hunt down Rudd. Riggs confronts and fights Vorstedt hand-to-hand, culminating when Riggs stabs Vorstedt with his own knife and crushes him by dropping a cargo container on him. Rudd retaliates by shooting Riggs in the back multiple times with an antique Broomhandle Mauser pistol. Ignoring his claim to diplomatic immunity, Murtaugh kills Rudd with a single shot from his revolver and tends to Riggs, sharing a laugh with him as more LAPD personnel respond to the scene.

Cast

Production

Shane Black's original script

In the ending of Shane Black's original script, Riggs died very slowly after being stabbed by his arch-nemesis, "his worst nightmare", as Black himself said, after climactic battle which took place at hills during big brush fire, after destruction of stilt house. Warner Bros. and producers however disagreed and they also thought that Black's script was way too violent and dark, while they wanted a lighter, more comedic script, while Black's draft focused more on courage and heroics, like Riggs coming full circle from the way he was in the first film and how his relationship with Murtaugh and his family brought him back to life and into the real world, helping him to let his guard down and learn to accept the love of real people, and in Black's version of the script it's the very love that makes Riggs willing to die to protect them.[2]

Other parts from Black's script which were left out of the final version of the script include scene where Shapiro, female police officer working with Riggs and Murtaugh (one who is killed by bomb in the pool in the film) is tortured to death by South African villains, there was also a scene where Riggs is tortured in similar way like he was in first film, an action sequence in which plane full of cocaine gets destroyed causing for cocaine to fall all over L.A like snow, and the script ended with Murtaugh watching the video tape that Riggs made earlier since he had a premonition that he was going to die and in which he says his goodbye to Murtaugh.

Shane Black said in later years in interviews how he considers his original script for Lethal Weapon 2 which was also called Play Dirty to be his best work, and how other than the scene where stilt house gets destroyed, his script was completely different than the one used for filming.[3]

Warren Murphy and Jeffrey Boam's final script

When the original Shane Black screenplay was changed, he left the series. The rewrites that resulted in the final film are by Warren Murphy, co-creator of Remo Williams (the lead character of The Destroyer novels) and Jeffrey Boam (screenwriter for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Lost Boys). The character of Rika was originally intended to survive, with the last scene in the film being Riggs and Rika eating Thanksgiving dinner with the Murtaughs, but the director decided to kill the character to increase Riggs' motivation to destroy the South African drug smugglers. The film was the debut of Leo Getz (Joe Pesci), a crooked but whistleblowing CPA who is placed in protective custody by Riggs and Murtaugh, and makes the detectives' lives a living hell due to his neurotic behavior. The Getz character remained a regular throughout the remainder of the film series.

At two points in the film, Riggs intentionally dislocates his shoulder in order to get out of a straitjacket and then slams it back into place. This becomes a running gag not only throughout the film series, but also throughout a lot of parody films.

Filming

The scene where Riggs is on the road outside Arjen's stilt house and grabs onto the front of the truck (the same scene with the surfboard killing a driver) was filmed on March 21, 1989. The opening chase sequence was filmed on November 28, 1988. The scenes where Riggs and Rika are ambushed by helicopters at night on the beach were filmed at Marineland of the Pacific in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on "Cobble Beach". Other portions of the film were shot in Palm Springs, California.[4]:168–71

Patsy Kensit described her sex scene with Mel Gibson as having been very uncomfortable to act out. She stated that the reason was that she and Gibson were both married and both Catholics.

The Star Wars series and Ghostbusters notwithstanding (which were released some years before), the film was among the first of the summer blockbusters to feature the 'title only' style of opening that would become an established feature of 'event' films from that point on.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released on Warner Bros. Records and was written and performed by Michael Kamen, Eric Clapton, and David Sanborn.

The track list released commercially is as follows:[5]

  1. "Cheer Down" - George Harrison
  2. "Still Cruisin' (After All These Years)" - The Beach Boys
  3. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"(Bob Dylan) - Randy Crawford/Eric Clapton/David Sanborn
  4. "Riggs"
  5. "The Embassy"
  6. "Riggs and Roger"
  7. "Leo"
  8. "Goodnight Rika"
  9. "The Stilt House"
  10. "The Shipyard/Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

The soundtrack also includes "I'm Not Scared" performed by Eighth Wonder and "Since I Don't Have You", "This I Swear", "Lonely Way", "How Much", and "Believe Me" performed by The Skyliners;[6] however these are not included on the soundtrack album. The inclusion of Eighth Wonder in the soundtrack is notable as lead singer Patsy Kensit also appears in a major role in the film.

In 2013 La-La Land Records issued the complete score (plus the original soundtrack album) as Discs 3 and 4 of its Lethal Weapon Soundtrack Collection eight-disc set. Tracks in bold are previously unreleased, tracks in italics contain previously unreleased material.

Disc 1 (Disc 3)

  1. Main Title/Chase the Red BMW/Krugerrand 7:08
  2. Riggs' Shoulder 2:52
  3. Pieter Shoots Hans/The Gold Pen/Rog Is Taped/Hotel—Meeting Leo/Pool Fall 7:31
  4. You're Black, I'm Mad/Drive to Stilt House/Stilt House Fight 3:40
  5. Mulholland Chase 2:51
  6. Meeting Rudd/Bust 3:24
  7. Rubber Tree/Goodnight Mr. Rudd 2:13
  8. Haunting Rudd 2:11
  9. Finding Roger on the Toilet/Bomb Reveal/Bomb Squad Arrives 2:57
  10. Riggs & Murtaugh in Toilet/After the Toilet Bomb 2:56
  11. Sneaking Into the Embassy/So Long and Thanks for the Fish/Leo Loses Door 6:18
  12. Wyler is Shot 1:43
  13. Card House Explosion/Rika Lerve/The Alba Varden/Nail Gun Fight 5:30
  14. Helicopters Approach/Helicopter Showdown Attack 5:30
  15. You Can Stay With Me/Riggs Captured/Riggs Fights Back 4:51
  16. Carrying Rika on the Beach 3:11

Disc 2 (Disc 4)

  1. Stilt House Falls 2:42
  2. Drive to Shipyard 1:53
  3. Locked Into a Container/Out of Container/Ship Fight 3:08
  4. Ballet Fight/Riggs is Shot 3:36
  5. Knockin' on Heaven's Door/Riggs Dying 2:21
  6. Cheer Down - George Harrison 4:08
  7. Still Cruisin' (After All These Years) - The Beach Boys 3:36
  8. Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Randy Crawford 4:58
  9. Riggs 5:16
  10. The Embassy 5:37
  11. Riggs and Roger 5:53
  12. Leo 3:43
  13. Goodnight Rika 4:05
  14. The Stilt House 4:21
  15. The Shipyard 4:46

Release

Box office performance

Lethal Weapon 2 was the third most successful film of 1989 in North America (after Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), earning nearly $150 million domestically and $80.6 million overseas.

Critical reception

The film received mostly positive reviews, although not as many as the original. The New York Times stated thusly: "Though it includes a smashed car full of Krugerrands, a hillside house blown off its stilts and a bomb set under a toilet, the point of Lethal Weapon 2 is that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover get to race around in all that chaos, acting crazy. Before it skids out of control in the final sequence, the film is so careful to preserve its successful comic-action formula that it follows the most basic law of sequels. If you liked Lethal Weapon, you'll like Lethal Weapon 2; it's almost as simple as that."[7] Los Angeles Times reviewer Michael Wilmington stated that "though it's nice to have a big-audience action movie attacking apartheid and the slaughter of sea mammals, instead of acting as an enlistment poster for the Army Air Corps, local vigilante groups or the reopening of the Vietnam War, the sentiments don't really transcend the car crashes."[8] It currently holds an 83% approval on Rotten Tomatoes based on 36 reviews with an average rating of 6.6/10. Despite prominent anti-apartheid overtones and its somewhat crude depiction of Afrikaner characters, Lethal Weapon 2 was released uncensored in South Africa and proved a box-office success.

Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, and Richard Donner have all stated that Lethal Weapon 2 is their favorite film of the Lethal Weapon series.

Home media releases

Lethal Weapon 2 has been released on VHS and DVD numerous times, along with a singular Blu-ray Disc release. The first DVD was released in 1997 and featured the film's theatrical version. The Director's Cut was released in 2000. Since then, numerous sets have been released that contain all four films in the series (featuring the same DVDs). The theatrical version was also released on Blu-ray in 2006.

References

External links

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