Chapter Two: Lethal Weapon 2 vs. Die Hard 2
By Brett Ballard-Beach
November 8, 2012
With Lethal Weapon 2, the dynamic has slightly shifted so that Riggs is more of a high-energy fly in the ointment than a suicidal wild card. Confirming this are specific references to Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges that begin even before the opening title flash and are more or less complete by the time Pesci becomes an unofficial wisecracking third member of the duo. Still, the best scene in either film is the heart to heart the pair has while Murtaugh sits captive on a toilet seat wired to explode if so much as a butt cheek shifts. Director Richard Donner and screenwriter Jeffrey Boam actually allow a semi-serious conversation to emerge from this and heighten the tension by paradoxically slowing down the action and the obvious audience cues.
McClane is still as much of a badass (although whether born a badass or having badassery thrust upon him remains open to debate) as the first time around, but he also shows more dimensions than the standard action hero, whether it’s recoiling in disgust upon realizing that he did indeed dispatch a lackey with an icicle to the brain, crying in defeat when unable to prevent a plane from safely landing, or settling for getting his ass kicked during a climatic flight on a plane’s wing, all so that he can serendipitously deliver a fiery retribution accompanied by his signature “urban cowboy” Bartlett’s quote: “Yippie-ki-yay motherfucker!” Both Willis and Gibson have long made a career out of standing tough while getting the shit kicked out of them. The difference is in the Christ-like martyr pose Gibson often adopts (typified by his death on the rack in Braveheart) vs. the existential ennui Willis conveys (any number of scenes in The Last Boy Scout, the entirety of his great performance in 12 Monkeys).
From the standpoint of the action sequences, Lethal Weapon 2 delivers the most bodacious incidental kill (flying surfboard through driver’s side windshield=no bad guy to interrogate) and the most over-the-top sequence (Riggs using his 4x4 and a rope to bring down a house on stilts.) Die Hard 2 delivers the most enjoyably visceral and kinetic moment as a cornered McClane ejects out of a grounded plane and is propelled by a massive explosion up, up, up towards the camera, the sort of lovably over-the-top moment that defined director Renny Harlin’s early career and that enables me to defend such critically scuttled features as Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Lethal Weapon 2 may break the rules with it opening scene, but sticks strictly to the book in its finale by offing the previously referenced chief enforcer in a ridiculously violent manner while the smooth operator at the top of it all (silver-haired and tongued Joss Ackland) is dispatched with a bullet to the head. I give the edge to Die Hard 2 if only for the bad taste left in my mouth by Lethal Weapon 2’s Murtaugh willfully and maliciously shooting an unarmed man. It suggests how far his moral compass has been tweaked.
The last commonality I would cite in returning to the pair is the significant depreciation in enjoyment for both in regards to high-octane violent action. Neither one invigorates me as much as they once did which leaves me to settle on the characters and as finely sketched as Riggs and Murtaugh may be, my soft spot always mushes for McClane. Wary of technology, fairly terrible at relationships, fighting for relevance and often just to stay alive, he is the everyman of the larger than life action hero division. And as he settles in with a cigarette and coffee at the beginning of the film, weighed down by that clunky sweater, trying to shake the feeling that something isn’t right and that he is the only one to notice, it seems utterly understandable how the same shit can happen to the same guy twice.
APPENDIX: Theatrical movies watched with one or both parents 1980-1993
Mom and Dad (59):
The Empire Strikes Back, Blue Thunder, Never Say Never Again, Octopussy, Return of the Jedi, The Fly, The Princess Bride, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, Backdraft, Dances With Wolves, JFK, Platoon, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Fatal Attraction, Alien Nation, The War of the Roses, Baby Boom, Good Morning Vietnam, Edward Scissorhands, Gorillas in the Mist, Memories of Me, Punchline, The Naked Gun, The Bear, Dad, Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the 4th of July, Major League, The January Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, E.T., Flashback, Hunt for Red October, Pretty Woman, I Love You to Death, Narrow Margin, Pacific Heights, Memphis Belle, Home Alone, The Silence of the Lambs, Mortal Thoughts, Dead Again, Shattered, Other People’s Money, Little Man Tate, Cape Fear, Bugsy, Fried Green Tomatoes, Grand Canyon, Thunderheart, Unforgiven, Under Siege, River Runs Through It, Consenting Adults, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, A Few Good Men, Scent of a Woman, The Fugitive.
Mom (14):
Fox and the Hound, Lethal Weapon 2, Die Hard 2, Darkman, The Falls, Hardboiled, The Killer, Stand by Me, The Fisher King, Orlando, Boyz n the Hood, A League of their Own, Toys, Alive
Dad (18):
Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, The Last of the Mohicans, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Flatliners, Basic Instinct, Point of No Return, Hamlet, Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, They Live, Shocker, Aliens, Blind Date, Total Recall, Days of Thunder, Misery, V.I. Warshawski, The People Under the Stairs
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