Premise: Trouble-seeking buddy cops Riggs and Murtaugh return for a forth round of mayhem, this time to investigate the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China who are being sold into slavery. Their search leads them into a confrontation with a particularly brutal triad member (Jet Li).



Review: The Lethal Weapon series is up there with the Die Hard and Predator franchises as one of Hollywood's better action film properties. Coincidently, these are all part of producer Joel Silver's world of screen violence. For martial arts movie fans, that name is also important (for good or ill) because Silver is the man who put Jet Li on the Hollywood map after placing him in Lethal Weapon IV, followed by Romeo Must Die (2000) and Cradle 2 the Grave (2003). As Li's first Hollywood movie, Lethal Weapon IV is also notable for putting Li into his first villainous role and for pitting him against an A-list Hollywood actor in his prime, something even Jackie Chan couldn't boast of. As for the series, the same old formula wears thin with an overlong story too obsessed with fleshing out character subplots and rehashing old gags. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover still have the same great screen chemistry, but the jokes are forced, Joe Pesci is simply annoying, and Chris Rock is miscast. That leaves Jet Li to quietly steal the show with his fight work and strong screen presence.

For clowning police detectives Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), it's business as usual when they find themselves faced with an armored assailant wielding an assault rifle and flame thrower. It's nothing a chicken-waddling Murtaugh, stripped to his boxers, can't handle. Shortly thereafter, the pair literally bump into a bigger problem when a cargo ship carrying smuggled immigrants from China nearly rams their boat. They take on the gun-totting smugglers and find several murdered victims which turns a case normally reserved for the INS, over to the local police. The case soon points to a Chinatown crime boss named Benny Chan (Kim Chan) who is in league with a Hong Kong triad member named Wah Sing-ku (Jet Li). Together, they are counterfeiting Chinese yuan to be exchanged for the release of four senior triad members held by Chinese authorities. As Riggs and Murtaugh each struggle through personal issues involving their loved ones, Wah makes the case personal when he crashes Murtaugh's home while looking for an immigrant (Eddy Ko Hung) and his family who Murtaugh had rescued from deportation. With the aid of screwball private eye Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) and Detective Lee Butters (Chris Rock), Riggs and Murtaugh uncover the counterfeiting scam and eventually drop in on the prisoner-money exchange to spoil the deal.

The number one issue with Lethal Weapon IV is not whether the film lives up to its predecessors or not, but whether Jet Li's performance can match the standards of his Hong Kong movie roles. The answer is yes and no. A small Hong Kong stunt team including Corey Yuen Kwai was brought in along with Li to lend some of that Hong Kong action magic to the film. The idea was to marry the best of Western and Eastern action filmmaking. In a number of ways, it works. The film has the usual pyrotechnics, street brawler fisticuffs, gunplay, and vehicular destruction one expects from Hollywood, while Li delivers lightning-fast moves that have no equal. He kicks the stuffing out of everyone he meets including Gibson, Glover and even Russo. His performance as a villain is surprisingly effective as he turns that stoic Wong Fei-hung look into a sinister look of cruel intent. It's understandable that Li had reservations about playing a villain as his ticket to Hollywood fame, but after looking at all of his subsequent Hollywood roles through 2003, his bad guy persona holds up very well.

Jet Li has four major fight scenes. They're obviously shorter and less outrageous than his Hong Kong fights, but Li's abilities are not diminished as a result. Rather, Donner adapts his fighting to the Hollywood shooting style. As a result, Gibson taking on Li seems a little more plausible. The end fight is the best. It's much more brutal and realistic than most of Li's Hong Kong film fights. This fight is actually a much better example of effectively combining the two action film styles than the excessive wire fu of Romeo Must Die or the CGI and wire excess of The One.

The rest of the action in Lethal Weapon IV is excellent. Within twelve minutes of the film's running time Gibson has already blown up a gas station and set a freighter on fire during a water-born shootout. A highlight is an elaborate car chase scene where Gibson climbs into a mobile home in transit on the highway to yank a driver out of a nearby car. Later, a car literally leaps into a high-rise building and out the other side. Director Richard Donner thankfully shoots almost all of these scenes free of CGI and they look great.

The weakest point of Lethal Weapon IV is the script. With a running time of 127 minutes, the film is much too long for a standard action movie and feels that way whenever the story dips into the various subplots meant to flesh out character development. After Gibson and Glover tackle Li in the finale, the film rambles on for another twenty minutes or so as the subplots are tied up. I can see where Donner and his team wanted to add dimension to the film and make the viewer care about the characters, but it's all too much by the time Joe Pesci goes into his sappy "Froggy" story. The franchise has become an ensemble comedy piece where Pesci has time to do his obnoxious "okay, okay" shtick, Russo and Gibson fuss over the prickly topic of marriage, and Glover mistakes Chris Rock's affection as a future son-in-law for homosexual advances. It's all neatly tied together, but too involved. Instead on focusing on the regular characters as much as they did, I would have preferred to see Eddy Ko Hung's relationship with Danny Glover fleshed out a bit more and the triad members given more time. Unfortunately, the film rushes through portions of the main plot and simply tosses in some voice-over narration to fill in the gaps.

The original Lethal Weapon (1987) is still the best in the series. As Hollywood fare, the sequels have held up reasonably well. Lethal Weapon IV certainly has a lot going for it in action sequences and in the main actors' camaraderie. Sticking Jet Li into the film was their best idea though. His performance is by far the most compelling and helps to overcome some of the more stale elements of a series that is more or less played out.