Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

As much as Lethal Weapon may have stepped outside its genre trappings to strike an unexpected chord, its sequel was the film that gave the series the legs it needed to continue onward and upward. While it still plumbs some dark, painful subject matter for its lead characters, Lethal Weapon 2 skews lighter by treating the Murtaugh-Riggs dynamic as the stuff of fruitful comedy, an approach intensified by the winning Leo Getz character, whom Joe Pesci makes all his own. The verbal ticks of Pesci's loudmouth pipsqueak took on a pop culture life of their own, with filmgoers eager to mimic his rapid-fire locutions. But it's the supreme comfort of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, with both each other and the script, that rockets this to the top of buddy movies to such an extent that it became ripe for parody. Richard Donner again proves his command of this material with a handful of memorable set pieces, and especially his use of Gibson in Gibson's trademark bug-out scenes, which coined the franchise title. The familiarity of the recurring jokes and character traits would start to feel a little weary by Lethal Weapon 3, but here, they're the stuff sequel dreams are made of. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide