Down And Out In The City Of Angels-Danny Glover And Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Kenny Jacobs

[This time unlike in my last review in this space when I did a nice job, according to site manager Greg Green, on Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn’s 1938 Bringing Up Baby now seen as a minor classic directed by Howard Hawks  I really can mimic old-time reviewer Phil Larkin’s now seemingly patented WFT. Why? Well it seems that the biggest way that you can get the attention of Greg and the Editorial Board (which Phil has lambasted to hell as Greg’s toadies but who are all working writers and so I take umbrage at his remarks that they are nothing but his voting fodder) is by belly-aching enough about the pick of assignments. At least that worked for Phil as mild-mannered and demur (if you can use that word describing a man) Greg Green bowed down to the onslaught and “switched” reviews with me now doing the one under review, Lethal Weapon 3, and Phil taking my justly earned plum assignment on the minor Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet classic Across the Pacific. I was going to use my take on that review as a lead-in to another film by this trio the major classic film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade-led The Maltese Falcon.

So it looks like this place is starting to be run the way that I am told since I don’t know directly I am a new kid on the block the same way when the old site manager the now justly deposed and exiled out in Utah, Nevada, Siberia some place like that Allan Jackson ran the show. Basically cry big enough crocodile tears and Uncle Greg will chase your blues away whether you are capable of doing the job or not. Which off of Phil’s last review of the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson is certainly in question. That is the one where Phil went off on popcorn-fattened and sugar-high soda filled young kids, their gullible parents, me as Greg’s goddam teacher’s pet which is all wrong, theater owners filling kids with fattening popcorn and cavity-producing sodas, Marvel comic screenwriters who couldn’t figure out a reasonable plot if they found one on the street, Captain America as a brainless twit, the Hulk as nothing but a ballooned-up mutant, Thor as nothing but a beauty queen, Ironman as a highly paid flunky and I don’t know what else since I stopped reading the thing when I knew there would be conveniently no plot summary. Hell Phil even took a swipe at eye candy Black Widow.

Guess what he wrote about three lines of real review. For that the bastard gets a minor Bogie plum on the way to the big Bogie one which I am sure he will argue for as I would to do the pair as a combo. So now you know why a young guy like me trying to break into the film reviewing business to prove to my parents that all that money they spent on college and graduate school wasn’t wasted is saying WTF. I won’t say I am a team player yet but I will soldier on as the older writers like to say all the time when they are behind deadline. Kenny Jacobs]             

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Funny after all I said about lame Phil Larkin above in the turf wars for good assignments I have to agree with him that these modern action films really are predictable. Really hard, if you want to know,   

to get a handle on since, again kudos to Phil, the plotline was done by some kid in elementary school whose father just happened to be the credited screenwriter on the leaden balloon. Harder still (and why I was going to go big on that Across The Pacific/The Maltese Falcon combination) why except for pure studio/theater owner greed and to fill production space these formula films have X number of sequels in this case three when the original idea if decent could not sustain further ramming. In the end all this one has going for it is a kind of play on the old older/younger buddy films from the likes of  Robert Redford and Paul Newman in vehicles like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. What the latter-day-saint moneybags producers forget is that those two stars were backed-up by scripts definitely not written by some credited screenwriter’s child.         

Since I am right now behind the eight ball with Greg and his esteemed Editorial Board sucking wind on this pig of a film I had better follow the old Sam Lowell commandment and write a decent plotline summary if I ever expect to see the light of day again.

To keep the hoary tradition alive here is the “skinny” whatever that means. Our worldly and wary seen it all City of Angels coppers, and buddies from all appearances, older sensible cop Roger, played by Danny Glover, and younger but more rash cop Martin, played by pretty boy Mel Gibson, are in deep doo-doo after failed bomb caper. Working the demoted streets they run into the proverbial street gangs and their armament, high-grade stuff not some junkie’s Saturday night special. Stuff that as it turns out can’t be purchased at Wal-Mart’s. Stuff that could only come from police confiscations. So this is strictly an inside job. Strictly rogue cop, or better ex-cop stuff.        

Things get heavy when Roger has to take down some dope-addled black kid with nothing but semi-automatic weaponry firing back at him in single shot mode. Christ taking down a kid, a friend of his son’s, and him, this is a weak sister sub-plot him, days away from a well-deserved retirement. So Roger and Martin bear down, get everybody they know involved in shaking the palm trees, do some dirty cop work to get info that might in post-Michael Brown, Black Lives Matter time, not get a very positive reception. So after the standard rough stuff, the standard million car chases going the wrong way on death Los Angeles super-highways, the standard drawn out shoot-out between unequal forces, they the unequal side,  they take down that rogue ex-cop. Take him down good. Guess what after this caper old Roger has some wind still in his sails and will not retire for a while. Just in case there had to be a Lethal Weapon 4 segue.

By the way what is not so weak sister in this mix is the usual dance around between pretty boy Martin and Laura, the woman copper running the Internal Affairs investigation, played by fetching Rene Russo. She is female-wise Martin’s twin and before you can close your eyes they are going round and round under the sheets. She, out in the streets though, gives as good as she gets taking a few for the cause. What I am wondering is why not let good old boy Roger retire and let Martin and Laura go buddy-buddy. I hope to high heaven this is enough to get me back in good graces. I am tired of running Phil’s tired WFT.