Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon is the perfect example of everything Neal King wrote about in his book Heroes in Hard Times. Although Danny Glover’s character, Sergeant Roger Murtaugh, and Mel Gibson’s character, Sergeant Martin Riggs, have live different lives the main point is basically the same. Murtaugh is a family man with three loving children, a beautiful wife, and a happy home. They don’t live an extravagant life but they all seem very content with their blue collar life still. Riggs on the other hand lives in a trailer on the beach with his dog. He drinks and smokes a lot and has been suicidal every since his wife died. In the eyes of the world, both men are under the radar and would seem like two random middle to lower class men. They almost seem to live two different lives because when they’re at work as detectives they become heroic, crime fighters who take on the world. For instance, the criminals steal Murtaugh’s daughter and the two detectives are also captured during their attempt to rescue her. Both men are then intensely tortured in an effort to uncover how much each man knows. Although they are both being brutally battered neither one of these two “normal” men talk. Even though Murtaugh is no longer a young man, he’s still able to defeat the bad guys miraculously along side Riggs, who is probably twenty years younger. This stereotype is the exact point that King is trying to make and the police officer role is continuously portrayed this way.