So Mom mentioned Lethal Weapon as a Christmas classic in that Polar Express entry and I have to agree, if only for two scenes: the coke dealer shootout in the tree lot, and Mr. Joshua shooting up the TV ("It's goddamn Christmas!").
Unfortunately, the best I could do tonight was Lethal Weapon 2 on cable, which is decidedly not a Christmas movie. And being who I am, I noticed a few things that never really struck me as ridiculous until just now, and not just the fact that you can't pull a stilt house off its foundation with a truck, and "diplomatic immunity" probably doesn't cover shooting a police officer with a Mauser.
In my defense, I haven't watched the movie in its entirety since 1992.
1. Why does Vorstedt fall prey to that bane of 80s action villains: the Ill-Advised Closing Maneuver (see also Karl from Die Hard)? He's already hamstrung Riggs with a knife throw and is dealing with him just fine through the use of roundhouse and front kicks. Why sacrifice your tactical advantage by jumping on him, especially after you've taunted him with the deaths of his wife and Rika and know he might be a little...miffed?
2. Did Murtaugh ever get annoyed that the bad guys sent two helicopters and a squadron of guys with machine guns to take out Riggs, but only sent two dudes - armed with one knife between them - to kill him? I guess Phoenix Project trumps 25-year police veteran.
3. A South African girl I went to college with informed me the accents of Arjen Rudd and company were pretty lousy from an Afrikaaner perspective. Can anyone confirm this, or was she just trying to piss me off so I wouldn't try to sleep with her?
True, but “JBR” evolves into that sweet Eric Clapton/Michael Kamen score before she takes the plunge.
Both actors playing Rudd and Rika are British, so it’s certainly not a genuine South African accent. It’s also a piece of verisimilitude I can’t see the producers of Lethal Weapon 2 being too concerned with. Add on that the English didn’t learn how to do a convincing American accent until at least the early 2000s, and they hear that one all the time, and it’s reasonable to believe that their South African accents were rubbish.
An actor friend of mine who had Afrikaans as her thesis accent at Carnegie Mellon said it is one of the harder accents to replicate. Compare Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond accent with the Lethal Weapon 2 stuff and then tell me from your critics perspective what you think.
Wasn’t the opening song for Lethal Weapon, where the lady does the swan dive out of the penthouse, Jingle Bell Rock? Sounds like a Christmas movie to me.