Lethal Weapon 4 is a 1998 American buddy cop action film directed and produced by Richard Donner, and starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock, and Jet Li (in his international film debut). The sequel to the 1992 film, Lethal Weapon 3, it is the fourth and final installment in the Lethal Weapon film series. It is the last film in the series directed by Donner before his death in 2021, and the latest to be released theatrically.
The film was released by Warner Bros. on July 10, 1998. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $285 million worldwide, becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of 1998.
A fifth film, with Glover and Gibson set to reprise their roles as Riggs and Murtaugh, has languished in development hell since 2007.
Plot
Lorna Cole is pregnant with LAPD Sergeant Martin Riggs's baby; they are not married, but both are thinking about it. LAPD Sergeant Roger Murtaugh's daughter Rianne is also pregnant but will not reveal who the father is.
The officers and Leo Getz come upon a Chinese immigrant smuggling ring after running an oceangoing vessel aground, though the boat's captain escapes. After witnessing an INS agent callously send those found back to China, Murtaugh finds the Hong family hiding to avoid deportation. Murtaugh offers them shelter in his home, and their families, along with Riggs and Cole, bond. Grandfather Hong is looking for his uncle, a skilled engraver, who had paid for their passage to the US. Riggs discovers through Lorna that the father of Rianne's unborn child is Detective Lee Butters, with the family hiding this from Murtaugh, who would not approve of his daughter being with a police officer.
Continued investigation of the smuggling ring leads the officers to "Uncle" Benny Chan, a crime boss operating from a Chinatown restaurant. There, they are introduced to high-ranking Triad negotiator Wah Sing Ku. Chan forces them out of his restaurant when the officers show no probable cause. Riggs pulls the fire alarm so the sprinklers go off, forcing all the restaurant customers to flee. Outside, Riggs spots the ship captain and tries to give chase but fails to capture him. Ku later intercepts the captain and kills him as punishment for attracting police attention.
Hong manages to contact his uncle, but this leads the Triads to Murtaugh's house. Ku and the Triad assassins kidnap the Hongs, tie up Murtaugh, his family, Riggs, and Cole and set the house ablaze. Ping, Hong's grandson, has evaded capture and helps to free the others in time. Although Riggs and Murtaugh chase down and kill the Triad members, Ku escapes. He then brings Mr. Hong to his uncle at a warehouse, where he has been engraving plates for a counterfeiting operation for Ku and Chan in exchange for transit for his family. Ku kills Hong in front of his uncle to assure his continued work.
With Getz serving as a distraction, the officers confront Chan at his dentist's office to interrogate him with laughing gas for more leads, obtaining some information about the so called Four Fathers. Laughing gas also causes Riggs and Butters to accidentally reveal the family secret to Murtaugh. Later, they discuss what they know with Detective Ng, who has worked on cases involving the Chinese government before. He recognizes that Ku must be trying to negotiate with a corrupt Chinese general for the release of the Four Fathers, high-ranking Triad members that include Ku's brother.
New information leads them to the abandoned warehouse where they find the bodies of Hong, his uncle, and Chan, the latter two killed by Ku after they served their usefulness. Knowing that Ku plans to use counterfeit money, the police intercept the exchange between Ku and the general, telling the general that the money is fake. The enraged general executes most of the Four Fathers before being executed by the Triad. Then a massive firefight breaks out between the Triad, the general's private army, and the police; most of the Triad and army are killed, and Butters is wounded while shielding Murtaugh. Ku attempts to escape with his brother, who is killed by Murtaugh. Riggs and Murtaugh then pursue him to a pier and engage him in a brutal fistfight. Murtaugh impales Ku through the stomach with a rebar before being knocked out by him. The pier then collapses, sending Riggs and Ku into the water. Riggs finds an assault rifle and kills him, while Murtaugh recovers in time to rescue Riggs from a piece of concrete that had pinned him underwater.
Riggs and Getz later discover that Lorna is about to give birth and race to the hospital, where Riggs and Lorna are symbolically married by a rabbi just before she enters labor. Their son Billy and Rianne's daughter Victoria are born, and Murtaugh accepts Butters as his son-in-law whilst Hong's family is granted asylum.
Cast
In addition, series regularswho appear in minor roles in all four films of the franchiseinclude: Damon Hines and Ebonie Smith as Murtaugh children Nick and Carrie, respectively; and Mary Ellen Trainor as psychologist Stephanie Woods.
Production In early 1993, after the release of Lethal Weapon 3, Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver tried buying a new spec script titled Simon Says in hopes of rewriting it into a script for Lethal Weapon 4. Written by Jonathan Hensleigh, the story was about a police detective and a shop owner forced to find and stop bombs planted all over a city as part of a mad bomber's revenge plot against the detective.
However, 20th Century Fox purchased the script first, planning a project for Brandon Lee's next film after The Crow. It was considered for a standalone film or to be re-written into a sequel to his 1992 action film, Rapid Fire, when Lee was killed during filming on The Crow. Fox would then use the script as the basis for a third Die Hard film they were having trouble developing. After many rewrites by several writers, it was finally made into Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995).
In July 1993, Warner Bros. and Silver started working on not just the fourth Lethal Weapon film but a fifth as well. Screenwriter and script doctor Jonathan Lemkin, who had just done some uncredited work for them on Demolition Man (1993), was hired to write the script for Lethal Weapon 4 while another writer worked on the script for Lethal Weapon 5. According to Silver, the plan was to shoot both films back-to-back, with the possibility of using the best parts of both scripts for a single film.L.A. Times - "FILM CLIPS - A look inside Hollywood and the movies : 'What're You Working On?' 'What!? So Am I!' - July 18, 1993 - JEFFREY WELLS - "A two-man derby is now behind the development of Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver's upcoming "Lethal Weapon 4." Scripter Jonathan Lemkin ("Demolition Man") is working on the sequel while another as-yet-unhired writer will tap out "Lethal 5." According to Silver, both scripts may be filmed back-to-back or "we may fold the best elements of both into one script . . . we're keeping our options open."
In June 1994, Richard Donner was still planning on making both films. Asked about them in an interview at the time, however, Mel Gibson said he was not interested in doing any more Lethal Weapon sequels.https://ew.com/article/1994/06/03/end-lethal-weapon-franchise/ EW.com - "The end of the Lethal Weapon franchise - Mel Gibson turns down the possibility of another sequel - By Cindy Pearlman - June 03, 1994 - Danny Glover and Mel Gibson may be reunited (briefly) in Maverick, but don’t count on seeing the two together in another Lethal Weapon flick. When asked about director Richard Donner’s plans for two more sequels, Gibson puts his head in his hands and makes a snoring sound. "My answer to more Lethal Weapons? Nah," he says. "I know that there’re two scripts out there. My suggestion is that they change the title to Die Hard 3 and 4. Call the scripts Angry Bruce Willis 4. I’m not interested now."
Between late 1994 and early 1995, screenwriter Jeffrey Boam was brought in to rewrite the script for the fourth film. Boam had previously done uncredited work on the first Lethal Weapon, rewrote an original script by Shane Black and Warren Murphy called Play Dirty into Lethal Weapon 2, and wrote the story and script for Lethal Weapon 3. He was initially unsure of working on the film, as he had problems with the script and following a bad experience on the third film: he had to keep rewriting that script all through filming and was fired at one point only to be rehired later. Agreeing to work on the fourth script, he tossed out the existing story and began work on his own. His first draft was completed in January 1995, focusing on Riggs and Murtaugh fighting neo-Nazi survivalists committing terrorist attacks on L.A., including using Stinger missiles to attempt to shoot down a jet carrying the Los Angeles Lakers. He said in an interview at the time that he would probably have to write at least three more drafts. By October 1995, Boam was still working on the script, while at the same time also working on a fourth Indiana Jones film which went unproduced.
Peter Bart's book The Gross: The Hits, The Flops -- The Summer That Ate Hollywood offered many details regarding Lethal Weapon 4'''s troubled production, from writing to release. While Boam was still working on his version of the story, other writers were brought in to pen their own versions, all of which were rejected. Though many were positive on the darker, edgier, more serious tone of Boam's script that recalled the first film, it was ultimately rejected because of the tone. Finally, Warner Bros. decided that they wanted to focus on a storyline involving the Chinese Triads. Boam would later say he felt that the main plot about counterfeiting Chinese money was not a good or suspenseful enough plot for a Lethal Weapon sequel.
Jonathan Lemkin was once again brought in to write the first version of the script involving the Triads, about four years after he wrote his first rejected script. Although his new script was received very positively, Warner Bros. again had other writers work on their own versions of the story. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote one of the unused scripts; they would be credited with Lemkin for the story of the finished film.
Silver ultimately brought in TV writer Channing Gibson to work on the script, after he was impressed by Gibson's rewrite of a spec script titled Sandblast, an action adventure thriller by screenwriter Steven Maeda described as "Die Hard (1988) meets Cliffhanger (1993)". Gibson took the gig thinking it would be a more relaxed writing job than anything he did for TV. However, much like the previous two sequels, the script kept getting changed and rewritten over and over again. Gibson would end up doing more work and revisions on it than on all of his TV work put together. Production even started with only half of the script. The ending was not written until it was finally time to film it.
The characters of Leo Getz and Lee Butters were not in the original scripts. Joe Pesci was hired and paid $1 million for three weeks of work, forcing rewrites. Gibson was "three-fourths" through his newest draft when Chris Rock was hired, which caused yet another rewrite. Butters was originally written to be a homosexual detective. When they started filming the police station scene between Riggs, Murtaugh, Leo, and Butters, everyone felt the character did not work. He was changed to be Rianne's husband and father to her unborn child. The two only share one scene in the final film with no written dialogue, due to last minute changes made to his character.
Besides Lemkin, Gibson, Gough and Millar, other writers did uncredited work on the script, including Michael Curtis, Greg Malins, Fred Dekker (who came up with the scene where Riggs and Murtaugh drive their car off the freeway and through the building), and even Boam was brought in to work on the script.