Lethal Weapon

Richard Donner’s 1987 film ties Roger Murtaugh, near retirement, to Martin Riggs, a detective who has been a danger to himself since his wife died. Shane Black wrote the first draft in under six weeks and it was far darker than what reached the screen, including deaths in which heads came apart. Donner cut them, telling The New York Times he wanted an old-fashioned western, where men died shot rather than dismembered. The same softening lands on your first sight of Riggs. Black opened the script in a bar; Donner threw that out for Riggs waking in his trailer, wanting a brighter way into the character. Three specialists worked the fights: Rorion Gracie taught Brazilian jiu-jitsu to Mel Gibson and Gary Busey, Dennis Newsome brought jailhouse rock, Cedric Adams brought capoeira. Marion Dougherty put Glover forward, and Donner has said the part’s ethnicity was never written into the script. Danny Glover was forty playing a man turning fifty, the joke the partnership leans on. A good fit if you can take meeting Riggs asleep in a trailer instead of the bar the script had, a warmer film than its own screenplay. Not for you if the scene of Riggs trying to kill himself, held long and never played as a gag, is more than you want.