Thursday, April 25, 2024

Blu-Ray/Movie Collection Review: Lethal Weapon Collection

 


This is a five-disc set with the four original Lethal Weapon series of buddy-cop movies (1987's Lethal Weapon, 1989's Lethal Weapon 2, 1992's Lethal Weapon 3, and 1998's Lethal Weapon 4). All of the movies starred Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs and Danny Glover as Roger Murtaugh. Throughout the series, Gary Busey, Mitchell Ryan,  Joe Peschi (who would be a co-star in parts 2-4), Patsy Kensit, Renee Ruso (who would co-star in parts 3 and 4), Chris Rock, and Jet Li (among others) would co-star.  It should be noted that this set only contains the theatrical versions of the movies. If you strongly prefer the extended editions of the movies, which to this point are only available on DVD, then you will probably want to steer clear of the Blu-ray set. It does, however, include the extended scenes (for films 1-3) included as bonus material on the disc for that movie. 

As I said above, there are 5 discs in all in this set. There is one disc for each movie, and then a 5th disc that contains 4 separate featurettes (one for each movie) which is essentially a 25th-anniversary commemorative documentary, with the highlight being a sit-down interview with Donner, Gibson, and Glover, interspersed with interviews from some of the other actors (mainly Renee Russo and Chris Rock) and filmmakers from the series. They also weave in some footage from the filming of each movie. In all the bonus disc has about 2hrs worth of additional material. The bonus material on Lethal Weapon 4's disc is a 30 min compilation of alternate and deleted scenes and gag reel material from each movie. So between the 4 movies, all the deleted scenes and bonus material there is about 10.5 hrs worth of content for those who go through all the extra features.

As far as the quality of the movies goes. Obviously, the A/V quality is better in the 4th movie than any of the others. You can tell there was no heavy film restoration done, so the movies pretty much look exactly the same as they always have. So, you are not getting the great jump in picture quality that you would get from movies that have a ton of CGI or released more recently. That is why sticking with the DVDs for those who prefer the extended editions of the movies is fine. I am not sure that the material included on the bonus disc is out there on the DVD releases though so you may want to take that into consideration. Hopefully, at some point, especially if a fifth movie gets made, there will be 4k restorations of all the movies, but that remains to be seen.

Overall, I am very happy with the set and would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series, especially those of us who are old enough to have seen all (or, in my case, the last three) of the movies in the theater when they were originally released. The movies mostly hold up well, but some of the dialogue (especially from the first two movies), is cheesy and/or would be considered non-PC these days. Even so, they still hold up as movies with great action blended with comedy and drama.

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