Riggs Gets A Bad Rap, Murtaugh’s The Real Shit Magnet: A Fresh Look At The Christmas Classic ‘Lethal Weapon’
By: Nicholas Wilbur
Tags: Movie Review, Christmas Movies, Film Reviews, Movies, Christmas

Martin Riggs is…Buddy Cop Jesus

Every year, as part of our American family tradition, we sit down to binge-watch the great Christmas movies of our time: Home Alone, The Santa Clause, Home Alone 2, The Santa Clause 2. Then the grand finales: Die Hard and the under-appreciated Lethal Weapon.

These movies are all franchises, because the originals are timeless. But what you realize when you’ve memorized the screenplay and watched the movie 36 times is that Lethal Weapon wasn’t meant to be a franchise. The first movie is dark and violent, a movie that is about loss, grief, and PTSD spun into a plot involving heroin, prostitution, torture and suicide.

The rest of the franchise films are pure buddy comedies.

Let me explain.

Martin Riggs is the suicidal-psychopath-Vietnam-vet-Special-Forces-sniper-cop who has as much PTSD from the war as he does his dead wife. He’s crazy, ballsy, and brash. He drinks, smokes, and shoves all the guns in his face (his own and everyone else’s).

When he teams up with Roger Murtaugh, the buttoned-up, by-the-book, old-school cop and family man, the duet is complete. They balance each other perfectly. Murtaugh carries a revolver, Riggs a Beretta 92; pressed slacks versus wrinkled jeans; the suburban house full of kids to a lonely trailer on the beach; bacon and orange juice for breakfast versus Coors in a bottle; a sedan to Riggs’ dually pickup.

Throughout the first film, it’s the independent maverick who’s blamed for all the bad shit that happens. It’s Riggs who empties his 9 mm Beretta to take out a sniper shooting at kids, handcuffs himself to a suicidal man and jumps off a building, and takes out a handful of drug/Christmas tree dealers by himself. He is reckless and dangerous, a literal lethal weapon.

But this all misses the point.

These are side stories that create the mystique of the main character, but the main plot of the movie isn’t based on Riggs at all. In fact, none of the Lethal Weapon movies are based on situations that Riggs creates. It’s Murtaugh who’s the shit magnet.

In the first installment, the trouble comes from Murtaugh’s connection to Vietnam buddy Michael Hunsaker. Hunsaker is a piece of shit. Beyond being a banker, he also traffics in heroin, which results in his own daughter becoming a drug-addict, a prostitute, and a corpse (first scene of the movie; not a spoiler).

Hunsaker isn’t Riggs’ friend. He’s Murtaugh’s, and it’s that friendship that leads Hunsaker’s boss to kidnap Murtaugh’s daughter, setting off a series of brutal punishments for the savior of the movie, old reliable Martin Riggs.

Riggs getting shot in the chest (which he survives).

He gets captured and tortured by electro-shock (which he survives).

He fights to the death with fellow Special Forces soldier Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey). Which he survives, bloodied and battered.

And all he gets in return is an invitation to Christmas dinner with the Murtaughs, whose matriarch is infamous for bad cooking.

Lethal Weapon was only ever supposed to have one sequel, called Play Dirty, and Riggs was supposed to die, sacrificing himself to save the Murtaugh family.

Hollywood greed saved the golden goose, but at the expense of seeing the hero fulfill his moral purpose. In Lethal Weapon 1, Riggs sacrifices his body and mind for his partner. In the sequel, he is supposed to sacrifice his life. It is the logical character arc of the psychologically damaged hero. He is unfit for a civilized world, he has lost everything, and so he applies his mercenary skills to save his only friend, Roger.

The second screenplay, even darker and bloodier than the first, was thrown out for the lighter, neater, funnier version that we have today.

You have a comedic foil (Joe Pesci) filling a prominent third-wheel-type role despite the original screenplay giving his character only one scene and a few lines of dialogue.

You have a plot centered around gold coins instead of heroin. You have constant comedic relief, dad jokes and one-liners that actually distract from the story (and this gets worst as the franchise goes on). Other than a flash of boob and Riggs saying “fuck” every time he has to bail Murtaugh out of another shit storm, the second-through-fourth Lethal Weapons probably could have been rated PG-13 instead of R.

I admit there are some dark themes that earn the R rating. In Lethal Weapon 2 there’s an ambush that kills several cops (an explosion, no gore), and in the third film Murtaugh shoots and kills a teenage boy (a gang banger and friend of Murtaugh’s son Nick). This all very sad, and I don’t mean to downplay it, but these moments of raw emotion are quickly buried beneath the constant slapstick humor.

They aren’t bad movies. I love a good bro-comedy. But they seem to try to do both humor and plot, and at the expense of what would have been a more meaningful role for Mel Gibson’s character.

What we do know is what was intended (the original screen writer told us). Riggs was supposed to serve out his Jesus-like role of sacrificing himself for the only good cause he had left in his life. Like humanity to Jesus, Murtaugh is unworthy of the great Martin Riggs’ self-sacrifice. He is the cause of his own troubles. He is the source of his own anguish. He is imperfect as a father, a husband, a police officer, a man. And that is what makes him worth saving. He is human.

And that is what makes Lethal Weapon a timeless Christmas classic.