What a concept! Mad Max meets The Cosby Show. What a surprise! It works better than a fastidious mind might imagine. One reason is that Mel Gibson himself has been recruited to play Lethal Weapon's lethal weapon, Los Angeles Police Detective Martin Riggs. Sometimes, when Gibson is not wandering the post-atomic Outback, he has a tendency merely to stand around looking internationally handsome. But Riggs is Max's psychological cousin, a man whose wild-eyed courage is based on having witnessed so much cruelty that he no longer cares whether he lives or dies. Gibson knows just how to temper the gaga energy of such figures with odd bursts of sweet innocence.
Fortunately too, Danny Glover plays the Cosby role: Veteran Cop Roger Murtaugh, a solid professional with a patient wife and numerous lively progeny. Glover brings a weary gravity -- no cute stuff permitted -- to his relationship with his flock and with his new partner. The latter may have a death wish, but Murtaugh has a strong life wish, and the patience to drip it slowly into Riggs' sensibility.
This is no easy task, given the hurly-burly of a crowded plot. The pair pick up the trail of a drug-smuggling ring, and the film never quite persuades us that a smart group like this one would turn on the Murtaugh clan in order to scare off Dad. But it is hard to focus on such fine points, given the dark intensity with which Director Richard Donner stages the nonstop action of the film's final 30 minutes. Among movie bone crackers, he is the one who seems to have an advanced degree in chiropractic. If you are going to submit to a working over, it is nice to be in such expert hands.