12 Days of Christmas Movies: Is Lethal Weapon an Alternative Christmas Flick?

It’s the festive season once again and movie buffs are gearing up for that big annual debate: Is Die Hard a Christmas film? I for one come down on the side of “Absolutely”, and I’ll get into why later. But there are less vociferous voices out there also making a case for Lethal Weapon as an action-packed alternative to the standard Christmas fare.

Released in March 1987 in the year prior to John McLane’s explosive Christmas Eve party at the Nakatomi Plaza, Lethal Weapon was the film that put screenwriter Shane Black on the Hollywood map. It was his first script after graduating from UCLA and it landed him a $250,000 pay day at only 26 years old. ‘87 was a huge time for Black – he also wrote Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad, and found himself helicoptered into Predator as an on-location script doctor, but mostly stood around telling crude jokes as one of Arnie’s squad.

If Black loves one thing more than setting an L.A.-based buddy thriller at Christmas time, it’s killing off attractive young women as a plot device. Black revels in the seedy neo-noirish milieu he creates, and his attitude towards female characters is sometimes accused of being degrading and misogynistic. 

The life cycle of a woman in Black’s world roughly follows: They move from glowing childhood innocence to sassy teenage-hood before getting a job as an exotic dancer, hooker, or porn actress once they come of age. This leaves them vulnerable to abuse, kidnapping, and murder at the hands of various sleazeballs and bad guys. Should they survive their early flourishes of sexual desirability, they might settle down to become an ex-wife or cheating wife (The Last Boy Scout) or even get a real career, such as a police psychologist like Mary Ellen Trainor in Lethal Weapon. Of course, these are fairly regular tropes in Hollywood action movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but it really stands in Black screenplays because he has returned to the same formula over and over again throughout his career.

Anyway, back to the movie. We get straight into the holiday mood with Bobby Helms crooning “Jingle Bell Rock” as we take a night flight across Los Angeles over the opening credits, zooming in on a luxury condo on the top floor of the Long Beach International Tower. Then the mood darkens as co-composer Michael Kamen (working on the score with Eric Clapton) sprinkles in some slightly sinister sleigh bells – something he would run with fully on the Die Hard soundtrack.

We briefly meet Amanda Hunsacker (Jackie Swanson), half-naked and writhing sensually on the bed. She hoovers up a noseful of poison-laced cocaine before hurling herself off the balcony to her death – Black would repeat this attention-grabbing trick of slaying a bare-breasted beauty almost 30 years later in The Nice Guys.

Now it’s time to meet our protagonists. First up is homicide detective Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) who is celebrating his 50th birthday with his loving family (bonus Christmas points for casting Darlene Love as his wife Trish). He seems pretty content with his lot but generally believes he is getting “too old for this shit,” as would become his catchphrase throughout the Lethal Weapon series.

In traditional buddy cop fashion, Murtaugh is reluctantly paired with Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), a former Special Forces operative who is now borderline suicidal after his wife’s death in a car accident. Despite professional advice from department shrink Stephanie Woods (Trainor), their hard-nosed Captain thinks Riggs might be faking his psychotic behaviour to swing an early pension. It doesn’t take long for Murtaugh to realise Riggs is really on the edge.

An early call reveals the influence of Dirty Harry on Black’s script. Murtaugh and Riggs are first on the scene when someone reports a potential jumper, and the latter showcases his maverick approach to police work by bringing the guy down to safety in the most reckless way imaginable. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) would no doubt grimace with approval.

As Riggs and Murtaugh bicker and grudgingly bond, they gradually uncover a by-the-numbers thriller plot. Amanda was the daughter of Murtaugh’s old war buddy Michael Hunsacker (Tom Atkins), a banker who has gotten himself involved in the drug-running exploits of a gang of veteran CIA mercenaries headed by the General (Mitchell Ryan) and his chief henchman Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey). Suspects keep dying until things get personal and Murtaugh’s teenage daughter Rianne (Traci Wolfe) is snatched by the villains, ostensibly because Murtaugh has found out too much about their murky operations.

Frankly, the plot stretches credibility even for an ‘80s action movie. The bad guys are quite happy murdering any and all supporting characters before they can squeal, so why would they go through protracted hostage negotiations with Murtaugh rather than just whacking him as well? 

That’s a pretty moot point, because the plot is always in service of the buddy dynamic in this kind of Shane Black action romp. Luckily, Lethal Weapon has one of the best screen pairings in such a movie, with Mel Gibson sharing excellent chemistry with Danny Glover.

Bruce Willis was initially approached to play Riggs but turned it down because he thought the script was too violent – obviously, he had a change of heart when Die Hard rolled around. In stepped Mel Gibson, who was then building his reputation as an actor by interspersing Mad Max sequels with more thoughtful fare like The Year of Living Dangerously.

Gibson has since revealed himself to be a potentially toxic personality off-screen, but his performance as Riggs shows why Lethal Weapon made him a major Hollywood leading man. He invests the suicidal cop with an edgy charisma, and it gets genuinely intense at times – an early scene where Riggs contemplates blowing his own head off in his beachside shack is a masterclass in maximalist acting.

Gibson’s live-wire turn is neatly contrasted by Glover’s sensible persona as Murtaugh, playing older for the character – Glover was only 41 when the movie came out. The pair rewrote the rulebook on the old mis-matched buddy cop trope so effectively that it became Hollywood cliche almost immediately. 

Shane Black’s original screenplay didn’t specify Murtaugh’s ethnicity, but casting an African-American actor like Glover, at that point best-known for playing the abusive Mr. Johnson in The Color Purple, was a controversial masterstroke. At the time, it was still quite unusual for a black actor to receive leading man status alongside a white star. The choice added an extra dimension of social consciousness that resulted in director Richard Donner receiving death threats from extreme-right action movie fans.

The buddy comedy aspect, with our heroes arguing and wise-cracking amid all the mayhem, is where Shane Black excels. We’d see it again with Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout; Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson in The Long Kiss Goodnight; Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; and Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in The Nice Guys. The plots may be throwaway and the sexual politics may be problematic, but who cares when the chemistry and banter between the two leads is this good?

Lethal Weapon is directed capably by Donner, two years after he did Indiana Jones for kids in The Goonies. Donner was a seasoned pro and he kept the expected beats dropping like clockwork with the minimum of fuss. Things blow up and people get shot (the deafening sound effects garnered the film’s only Oscar nod for Best Sound Mixing). Sex workers get murdered because they know too much and a teenage girl is kidnapped by goons. Our heroes are separated and Riggs suffers an obligatory torture scene at the hands of Al Jeong, the go-to ‘80s Asian henchman who you know is going to die (see also: Die Hard). The big boss man gets his comeuppance before a showdown between Riggs and Mr. Joshua on Murtaugh’s lawn.

But is Lethal Weapon a Christmas film, or simply a movie set at Christmas time? Shane Black explained to Den of Geek why so many of his thrillers occur at this time of year:

Christmas is fun. It’s unifying, and all your characters are involved in this event that stays within the larger story. It roots it, I think, it grounds everything. At Christmas, lonely people are lonelier, seeing friends and families go by. People take reckoning, they stock of where their lives are at Christmas. It just provides a backdrop against which different things can play out, but with one unifying, global heading. I’ve always liked it, especially in thrillers, for some reason. It’s a touch of magic.

I’d argue that all the best Christmas films owe a debt of gratitude to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, in which a cynical and/or disheartened character learns to appreciate what life is really all about. Obviously, it’s there in the many screen versions of Dickens’s celebrated tale, and it is clearly a major influence on It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s there in Bad Santa, Elf, and Die Hard, which is why I definitely believe the latter is a Christmas movie through and through, despite its original summer release date. The arc of Bruce Willis’s John McLane is very similar to that of James Stewart’s George Bailey, albeit with more gunfire and expletives, and he also has a Clarence-like sidekick (Reginald VelJohnson) to offer reassurance and help him see the error of his ways as he tries to survive a deadly situation and find his way back to his estranged family.

In this context, you can stretch the Dickens format to include Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), Riggs drops by the Murtaugh household on Christmas Day to leave a special gift for Roger: The hollow-pointed bullet he kept handy in case the urge to end it all became too tempting. He’s about to head on his way before Murtaugh invites him to join the family for dinner, confirming their friendship. I guess you can cast Riggs as both the Tiny Tim and the Scrooge of the piece. Not only does he not die (as Dickens took pains to emphasise about Tim at the end of A Christmas Carol), he also ditches all the suicidal humbug and joins a loving family for their festivities.

All that said, I still think Die Hard is more of a nailed-on alternative festive classic because it is absolutely steeped in Christmassy stuff, from the the needledrops on the soundtrack (“Christmas in Hollis” by Run DMC is my pick) to Michael Kamen’s sleigh bell-laden score. It’s set on Christmas Eve during a Christmas party and criminal mastermind Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) has a special Christmas miracle up his sleeve. McLane can’t resist joining the gift-giving fun by sending Gruber a dead henchman wearing a Santa hat and with “Ho Ho Ho” scrawled on his sweater.

Gruber’s crew are feeling jolly, too. The safe-cracking tech boffin (Clarence Gilyard) gets into the seasonal mood while on surveillance duty: “Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except… the four assholes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two formation.” 

The spirit of good will to all men is so strong in Die Hard that we feel elated when the baddies finally open the vault to the joyous strains of Beethoven’s 9th. Hell, McLane’s wife is even named Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). In short, Christmas runs through the movie like stripes in a candy cane, to the extent that it’s almost impossible to imagine it set at any other time of the year.

Lethal Weapon may also take place at Christmas, but it is far more of a background detail rather than something intrinsic to the story. So sure, call it an alternative Christmas film if it’s more your jam, but it simply doesn’t give me the festive feels the way Die Hard does.