Lethal Weapon 2

After the first movie ended I immediately fired this one up. My brother has been raving about this movie for years and I had always meant to watch it, I just never had. Well the day has finally come and this is another really solid movie that I would put above the previous installment.

For starter's the movie starts to being a little more comedy into the mix. There are definitely some serious moments here, but the tone is generally a lot lighter than the first movie. This one even brings in the use of one-liners. They are all pretty corny, but at the same they are all pretty awesome. How can you not smile when Danny Glover kills 2 guys with a nail gun and then in all seriousness proclaims "Nailed 'em both." The answer is, you can't not smile. Unless you don't have a face, that is the only situation where that may happen.

The action is also kicked up a notch in this one, with the movie opening right in the middle of a car chase. It follows the basic action movie rule that more than 20 minutes should never go by without some sort of fight scene or action scene of some sort. It's a good rule to go by and it's put to good use here.

The chemistry between Gibson and Glover is even better here with the two playing off each together wonderfully. Gibson's character is still pretty crazy and he has a couple of great moments where he fucking loses it. He's so much fun to watch that the whole movie could just be Gibson freaking out about shit and I would be completely into it. Joe Pesci's character is introduced I suppose to add some more comedic relief to the whole thing but his character is best in small doses and the movie gives us just a bit too much of him I felt. It doesn't ruin things too much but I did get a little irritated by his character as the movie went on.

I miss the days when action movies would put some actual effort into developing their villains. Usually these days the villains only get a few scenes and you never really care about their plan or really anything they are up to. Back in the Die Hard days they actually gave a shit, and Lethal Weapon 2 is another good example of that. The villains in this movie make you want to spit in your TV they make you so angry. They're so arrogant and smug that no matter what happens to them it doesn't seem like it's enough. It does lead to some great one liners though.

Lethal Weapon 2 is a great follow-up to the first one, and as I said earlier, a superior one at that. It makes me a little mad that I didn't watch these movies sooner.

8/10