Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
The first half hour of this movie is such an empty mixture of very fast chase scenes and some dull talking between supposed bad guys you might not get to the final hour which is fun and funny and as good (in a way) as the first Lethal Weapon from two years earlier. Same cast, same crew, same assets.
The problem at first is partly that we don't know who the bad guys are. We have no reason to fear or hate them. We just know that Mel and Danny have to be in on some new awful crime situation. That requires faith, so okay, we keep watching. The opening chase is highly kinetic and violent and spectacular, if you like that kind of thing. It is also a heads up for a couple scenes later that are also really spectacular —a ridiculous machine gun festival from a helicopter (if they have helicopters that have rocket grenades and boom, that's that), and a really ridiculous yanking down of a spectacular building with a GMC pickup truck (an amazing highlight of the movie).
Yeah, it's a wonderful mixed bag. By the end I was loving it the way you love things like this—not as film studies, but as a lowbrow good time. There are some classic scenes, also ridiculous—like the great toilet one—and some filler, of course, but it clicks along and is a worthy sequel. If you liked the first, you'll like the second.
However, it's worth saying the first one has an elegance at times that makes it not just more artful (who cares?) but more compelling. Just the way the first scene is handled (in the first movie) makes you want to know what's happening, and you worry about the next few scenes because of the first one. Here, it's more a continuation of affection—which means you might have to see the first one before this, in case you haven't!
