25 Years Ago This Month: May 1987

Everything that makes tons of money at the box office is ripe for sequel production. Beverly Hills Cop II didn't live up to the promise of the first one, which is a smartly written and well-made action film. The sequel finished at number three for the year with $153 million in domestic box office receipts.

Lethal Weapon 4 Movie Review

First published on Uwire in Summer 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments, but nothing that affects content.

Just when you thought sequels couldn’t go any further, they did. The fourth installment in the Lethal Weapon series opens with a bang of an action sequence in which detectives Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) gun down a man wearing an armored suit and carrying a flame-thrower.

The rest of the film follows with many more spectacular action sequences including a freeway car chase which outdoes nearly any car chase I’ve seen. Many of the sequences and the beautifully choreographed fight scenes are made possible by Jet Li, an Asian martial arts star making his American film debut. Li provides Riggs with the most difficult enemy of the series.