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Well, yes. Yes it does. Shane Black wrote Lethal Weapon and Predator. On that alone, he can steal my car and drive it through my living room with me on the couch, for all I care.

The truest benefit of such a superb setup is that by the time Riggs and Murtaugh are, per the trope, made reluctant partners, there’s actually legit tension. Everyone knows what Riggs is going through (although curiously, nobody actually tries to HELP him - more on that in a moment), and he’s considered a risk to work with, Murtaugh included. Meanwhile, Riggs isn’t so sure he trusts himself not to wander into traffic, clucking like a chicken the first time they get into a gunfight. The partnership probably wouldn’t have worked out - the film makes this abundantly obvious - except for one thing - why were Riggs and Murtaugh even partnered together, you ask?

It turns out the jumper at the beginning of the film was the daughter of Murtaugh’s old army BFF, a man named Hunsaker (Tom Atkins). When his daughter’s death connects Hunsaker with a shadowy underground of mercenaries (led by Mitchell Ryan and Gary Busey) things get personal, and it is here that the story really shines. Murtaugh returns a lifesaving favor by inviting Riggs into his home. This exposure to a stable family life gives the tortured veteran new hope, and a new respect for the man he serves with. I’ve already implied that Gibson crushes his role, and Danny Glover’s blue collar gravitas is the perfect compliment. He’s that guy who always plays by the rules but lets his suicidal partner drive home drunk about halfway through the film.

It was a different time. Please, don’t ever do that. The point is, Murtaugh is good for the kid.

That said, I believe I implied that not ALL the the characters fare equally well. By the time we meet our antagonists, there’s little time left for extensive introductions. For the sake of economy former General Peter McAllister (Ryan) and his crazy-ass honey badger henchman Mr. Joshua (Busey) are introduced in a scene where McAllister spontaneously starts screaming, grabs a cigarette lighter and tries to set Joshua’s arm on fire. Gary Busey was still in his physical and professional prime at this time, and as such, he makes for a superb villain. But let’s be real. We know the G-Man. I choose to take the scene literally and assume that Busey is so insane that he’s actually immune to fire.

For your sake and his - do not approach him. What I’m saying is that the villains get short shrift in Lethal Weapon. I suppose you could argue that we know all we need to - one’s crazy, one’s crazy badass, and they both want our heroes dead. On the upside, what this mildly destructive narrative forfeiture allows us to have is a well fleshed out pair of sympathetically flawed action heroes who live in a world that actually kind of resembles ours. The only real criticisms I can level at Lethal Weapon are that the bad guys are written so thin as to be borderline comical, but it is at the expense of a truly engaging A-story surrounding the relationship between the two heroes.

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