Movies
Lethal Weapon 4
Any rising above expectations, any improvement over the past two sequels, is not because new recruit Chris Rock has upped the level of comedy, which was already on overflow, but rather because Hong Kong action star Jet Li has upped the level of melodrama. His stare-down of Mel Gibson on their initial encounter reminds us of the formidable opposition put up by Gary Busey in the first, and the one really serious, entry in the series. Unhappily, even as Li perseveres in playing it straight, the melodrama degenerates into martial-arts dance routines in which the Kicked Asses are only too willing to follow the Ass Kicker's lead. And we lose all respect for the villain when he leaves his duct-taped adversaries alive in a burning house where they can be rescued in the nick of time by a tot with a toy scissors. And the freeway chase -- long before our heroes' vehicle leaves the pavement, crashes into a glass office building, plows through an obstacle course of drafting tables, crashes out the other side of the building, and lands neatly back on the road in uninterrupted hot pursuit -- reaches a height of idiocy unsurpassed in prior installments. The ultimate pinnacle: Gibson's stunt-double clambering out onto the hood of the car at top speed and crawling into the back window of the towed mobile home in lane two, in order to gain access to the bad guys' car maintaining perfect pace this whole while in lane one. It's a measure of the decline in contemporary action films that the viewers are expected to root not so much for the heroes as for the stunt men. It's a measure of the decline in the viewing audience that they agree to do so. Danny Glover, Rene Russo, Joe Pesci; directed by Richard Donner. 1998.
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MPAA Rating: R