4K Blu-Ray Review: Lethal Weapon

The Film

As I get older, I get more and more allergic to copaganda, and I find myself having trouble revisiting even old-school favorites. Even something as fantastical as Lethal Weapon, Shane Black's college fantasy that sparked his career and made Mel Gibson a star, feels like a relic with more iffy moments popping up every year.

At heart, it's a buddy comedy about mismatched people who realize they're two sides of the same coin. In theory, it could take place at any workplace. But it's Los Angeles cops during the 80s, and befitting the era they're loose cannons who break the law as much as they uphold it. Today, it feels both quaint and troubling for its implications.

Especially considering how hard Mel Gibson has fallen for the lunacy of the far-right cult, now celebrating his place in Trump's heinous cabinet attempting to control art in North America. It's all ugly and tiresome, and it hangs over every enjoyable moment of Richard Donner's juvenile fantasy.

It's heartbreaking, too, as Lethal Weapon is, by all accounts, a funny and charming comedy with some great dialog, fantastic chemistry between the leads, and an effortlessly cool 80s vibe you can't replicate today. It doesn't make a lick of sense and the whole thing needs the audience to just go with the flow, but it's so much fun that you want to, as well.

Today, it's easy to spot the cliches and archetypes, but that's mostly because Lethal Weapon was the original template for them. It was such a cultural touchstone that everything afterwards copied it to some extent. Very few films can say that.

Gibson plays Riggs, a battered and broken man trying to get over the death of his wife. Danny Glover is Murtaugh, an aging (at barely 50!) cop looking forward to retirement, who gets assigned to babysit the explosive Riggs. Together, their mismatched dynamics lead them to solve crimes, put away bad guys, and annoy their superiors all the way to box office gold.

There's not much in terms of plot. Lethal Weapon is more of a loose collection of cool 80s tropes, including half-naked women, gunfights, chases, and entire barrages of insults involving some truly inventive swearing. Somewhere in the mix there's a loose idea of an objective, but put any logical scrutiny into the film and it falls apart.

Which is fine, really, because it's all so much fun. Gibson and Glover are timeless together, and their chemistry would carry the films even at their lowest point (looking at you, Lethal Weapon 4, with your ugly racism). Casting them together was such a spark of inspired madness that it shines even decades later.

Lethal Weapon isn't perfect, and it hasn't aged as gracefully as I'd hoped, but for those looking for a hefty dose of nostalgia will still find a lot to love here. Especially as the transfer itself is absolutely fantastic.

Video

The 2012 Blu-Ray release was already a stellar glow-up from the original DVD release, which itself marked a major improvement from the godawful VHS. So, naturally, the 4K is yet another leap forward, luckily without sacrificing any of the grit and grain that makes Lethal Weapon such a grimy favorite.

This release doesn't have Dolby Vision, though I've gotta admit that I can't see the difference between that and HDR10. Blacks are still inky and deep, and there's barely any crushing during the night time sequences. Skin tones look accurate, especially in close ups, and you can even pick out singular strands of hair on Mel Gibson's wild mop here and there.

My favorite details come out during the explosive finale, where Riggs has his ridiculous fistfight with the main villain. Check out the way the restoration keeps the detail on the grass, the water, and the fire, without ever overpowering the characters or how the light reflects off surfaces of the Murtaugh house. This is really great restoration work, especially when many would have chosen to just oversharpen everything with AI and call it a day.

Audio

Warner Bros. continues their line of single-handedly delivering the best and most comprehensive audio mixes on the market. Once again, Lethal Weapon comes with a new Dolby Atmos mix made for the modern market, and also the original theatrical track in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix.

Both of the mixes are good, with the original naturally being my preferred version. The Dolby Atmos is punchy and has some really spectacular additions for the rear channels to go nuts with, but I really enjoy how clear and sharp the original 2.0 Master Audio track proves to be even to this day.

Dialog is clear and well-balanced, gunshots rattle the room, and the jazzy 80s synths-and-sax-apocalypse score is pristine no matter which mix you choose.

All in all, this is yet another superlative release in terms of technical presentation from Warner Bros.

Extras

Now this is frustrating. The 2012 Blu-Ray collection was already pretty darn good, yet none of those extras make the leap to 4K. That means no commentary from Richard Donner, no making of -documentaries, just two crummy featurettes with barely any meat on their bones.

The first one, Remembering Dick Donner, is a jovial and sincere celebration of Donner as a filmmaker, with most of the cast and crew coming together to share their love for the iconic director. At 7 minutes, it barely scrapes his illustrious career and is more of a brief farewell than a proper celebration.

The second featurette is even shorter at just 6 minutes, and delves into the chemistry between Gibson and Glover. Again, it's brief and mostly amiable, but it's clear that Gibson's recent antics have kept everyone at arms length.

There are two cuts of the film on the disc – theatrical and director's cut – though the differences are barely worth mentioning. The director's cut was put together for an earlier DVD release and it wasn't Donner's doing, so calling it a director's cut is stretching the truth quite a bit.

This version is 7 minutes longer than the theatrical release, and features 5 new scenes that don't add anything worthwhile to the movie. They're a curiosity for fans, but everyone else is best sticking with the original theatrical cut, which is perfectly paced as it is.

And that's it, there's nothing else here. What an absolute shame considering how we've had good stuff around these films in the past.

Overall

Lethal Weapon is a product of its time, but luckily so is this 4K restoration. The film has never looked or sounded as good, and there's so much to love with Warner Bros'. dedication to preserving history the way they do.

Sadly, the lack of extras is a bummer, and it does drag the overall down just a bit. Hopefully, we can still get a big box set of the entire series one day, complete with all the legacy features we've now missed out on.

For fans of the film and of great art preservation, this is a no-brainer of a purchase.