Lethal Weapon 4

What is the earthly purpose of yet another Lethal Weapon movie? To have fun and make money. Ha ha ha. I certainly had fun at this movie, back in my bailiwick of City Place. This is a good example of the kind of action movie where, instead of really tensely holding your breath when something is happening (i.e, "Armageddon"), you just laugh uproariously at the really big stunts (while, admittedly, holding your breath, which is really hard to do). A good example of this would be the scene where Gibson/Riggs and Glover/Murtaugh drive a car up a ramp, through an office building, and back down onto the highway next to a car they're tailing. This was received as pure hilarity by the ever-discriminating AMC audience.

The problem with having another "Lethal Weapon" movie is that nothing whatsoever that the main characters (i.e., Gibson/Riggs and Glover/Murtaugh) do can possibly be taken seriously anymore. When Glover declares that by housing a bunch of illegal Chinese indentured servants (actually, the bad guys are attempting to indenture them) he is "freeing the slaves," we all laughed at that too. Even when they play that cheesy ‘80s-cop-movie-inheritance jazz music when people are expressing "emotions," it's hard to get into the spirit. People were skipping out on the last part of the movie where everyone gets together, after the big final fight, and while it had a sort of intoxicatingly effusive good humor it was hard to take it seriously at all. I'm not saying I want to take this movie seriously, but it's hard to feel any tenseness during the action scenes at all if you really don't care about anything. Explosions and fires and fistfights, large and enjoyable as this movie's are, do not intrinsically command attention for two hours. And Gibson and Glover aren't really bringing the emotional gravity in this movie.

The solution? Bring in a new character or two. Well, Chris Rock, funny as he is, isn't the answer to this specific problem (although he is the answer to the question "What made the preview to this movie so damn funny?", because at the end of it he said "Hi. I'm Mel Gibson. Yeah, I might look a little different, but it's the same ol' Mel"). Actually, Chris Rock's sole contributions to this movie are about two minutes of standup and getting shot, in that chronological order. I'm talking about Jet Li here.

What makes Jet Li such a badass, that he can be evil enough to give this movie an emotional core? Well, for one thing, he doesn't speak a word of English during the entire movie. I applaud this decision. I am tired of Asian martial arts heroes being asked to chop up English sentences in addition to limbs. But the main thing is this beatific smile he wears through most of the fight scenes, and the unearthly calm during the rest. There is this one priceless scene in Glover's house—this scene is worth the price of admission—where everyone good is fighting a bunch of unidentified Chinese, and Jet Li is standing on the stairs, above it all, smiling. It seems at first that he is smiling unaccountably, for his compatriots are getting whipped, but we soon find out that he is just very confident in his ability to kick everyone's ass in the building by his damn self. This confidence is justified very quickly.

From the moments when he kills fairly random people to the moments when he defends his boss to the final scene where he is truly scary because he finally looks just a little pissed off (since his brother is dead), Jet Li commands attention by being understated. Well, and with his ability to break people's limbs without thinking too much about it. I should not allow this ability to go unemphasized. He doesn't go in for that silly Chuck Norris 360 degree spin kick stuff, just solid, economical, deadly quick maneuvers that, at one point, take the entire top off of Mel Gibson's gun, and that anyone who doesn't know martial arts won't see coming. But the quieter moments make a big impression too (and this is where having him be mostly silent helps): when he sets his face like granite when strangling people with an intimidating chain of beads, for example. He is the consummate, all-around epitome of evil.

Therefore, when Jet Li embarks on a program of random killing and terror (unlike, say, when Danny Glover does this in "Switchback"), we take notice. And we can take the jokes as what they should be: releases from tension. And the rest of the movie, like the various explosive devices and flying cars that litter it, falls into place.

Of course, there are some quibbles to be had. For one, the whole entire movie is basically racist, as if the screenwriter were following Trent Lott's lead on foreign policy in making the Chinese into the new Soviet Union, in terms of getting beat on by patriots in movies. Admittedly, the disinterested viewer will find it hard not to harbor some respect for the man that is Jet Li, but like almost every other Chinese person with any power in this movie, he is pure unadulterated evil. The other Chinese are pretty pathetic, sympathy spectacles. Plus we are treated to the spectacle of Mel Gibson attempting to parody-speak with a "Chinese" accent, i.e., "Can I have a bowl of flied lice?" Euuuughh. You really just have to hold your nose through this stuff to enjoy the movie (and if you don't think you can, I wouldn't recommend going). This movie also makes the common error of having entirely too much plot connected with the main characters that has nothing to do with shooting anyone.

Also, this movie is, in some cosmic sense I don't normally think about overmuch, essentially pointless (the outgoing movie reviewer for the "Weekend" section in the Washington Post cited the oncoming "LW4" as one of the main reasons he was quitting). Well, I had fun, and that normally means they're going to make money. Ha ha ha.

Attractive Man Count: 3.

Attractive Woman Count: 2.

Overall Grade: A. Let's all go get lethal.

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