Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 18
Duration: 43 min (per episode)
Lethal Weapon: Season 1 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
Sometimes it feels as is Hollywood has run out of ideas when it comes to movies and series, seeing many movies are remade, with better effects, slightly different storylines and more than often they bastardize the original movie into something fairly mediocre that simply doesn’t have the same feel and look as the original piece. We were quite shocked to see Lethal Weapon getting the same treatment, but instead of making new movies, or remaking them, they decided to start from scratch and make it into a crime series. While the idea itself isn’t all too bad, we weren’t all too sure how this series would please the fans of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, who put down memorable performances in the original movies.
The story of the first season of Lethal Weapon is rather simple, as it revolves around the family man and police officer Roger Murtaugh (Damon Wayans) and the loose cannon Martin Riggs (Clayne Crawford), who has had a rather dark history during the last few months, as he lost the love of his life in an accident. Murtaugh is finally returning to the force after having a heart attack, and luck has it that he is paired up with Riggs, who’d rather forfeit his own life than solve a crime the old fashioned way. Overall the story remains simple throughout the surface of this first season, as it’s all about the two of them trying to work together, all while they closely start to bond and open up to one another.
Through it all runs a red thread that revolves around Murtaugh’s family life, and more importantly how Riggs is dealing with the loss of his wife, and that not all is how it seems. The latter becomes more and more important as the season progresses, showing more and more of Riggs’ past life, his relationship and last but not least on how he will get justice for the damage that he was dealt.
The flow is pretty much identical to other crime series, where there’s a new case each episode, all while the main thread slowly expands into something coherent, understandable and exciting. The episodes all handle their cases quite well, and if you can detach yourself from comparing too much with the old movies, the episodes are rather fun to watch. The chemistry between Murtaugh and Riggs feels somewhat authentic when looking at the source material, be it that both characters are younger, thrown into a more modern setting and of course being restricted by the 45 minutes of time of each episode, thus leaving less room for evolution in a single episode.
While the actors can’t immediately bring the same screenplay as Mel Gibson and Danny Glover did in the original Lethal Weapon movies, this new duo does a proper job in paying an homage to said actors. That being said, the series has been modernized as there is a lot more technology available as there was back in the day of the original films. The latter isn’t really a bother, but it also makes that the atmosphere of the series feels different than the original pieces, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as you could simply consider it an update of something that was slowly becoming dated.
The Blu-ray edition of this first season doesn’t come with a hefty amount of special features, safe for a decent amount of deleted scenes, a gag reel, an extended version of the pilot and a small sit-down with the minds behind the series, on how the series came to life, while trying to properly honor the original movies.
Conclusion
When it comes to the first season of Lethal Weapon we have decided to give this series the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the evolution and expansion of the series. The episodes themselves are fun and there’s a reasonable amount of action to be found, just like in the original movies. The chemistry of both leading characters feels familiar, but overall it doesn’t really come close to the quality of the source material. That being said, the series itself is fine, but in a way it feels like this series could have worked just as fine with a different name, but doing so would have attracted less attention.
No Comments