Lethal Weapon and Heros in Hard Time

Lethal Weapon is a story of two very different cops who are forced to work together to solve a murder mystery, which leads to a huge drug bust with a shoot them up ending. Mel Gibson’s character, Griggs, is the example of a hero in hard times. He is the type of cop that King describes throughout his book. Griggs’s dangerous profession has cost him his beautiful wife, making him borderline suicidal, and a crazier cop then he has ever been before. Yet this job that has driven his life in this direction is also the reason why he cannot actually go through the act of killing himself. He knows that the job is the only thing that he is good at.

The other hero in the movie played by Danny Glover is Mel Gibson’s partner. He is a cop who has everything, a beautiful family, big suburban house and a job that he loves. Yet he is a much different type of cop then his partner. He wants to catch every criminal, but not kill them. This is true until the enemy brings his family into the picture. This is when he becomes as bad as his partner.
The idea of race in this film is much less obvious then in Beverly Hills Cop, there can be many interpretations on whether it is a buddy film or not. For the most part Danny Glover is Mel Gibson’s black sidekick. It is made clear that Gibson is the star cop between the two. Yet both the black cop and the white cop do have a purpose. Gibson does help Glover out in the racist world that they live in by helping to save his family at ever chance that he is given. Glover uses his resources of being a family man to help Gibson recover from the loss of his wife. Although racism still exists in the film, when these two different people came together and ended up saving them both.