Metacritic reviews

In a movie with the energy of this one, we're exhilarated by the sheer freedom of movement; the violence becomes surrealistic and less important than the movie's underlying energy level.

After watching Gibson and Glover grow accustomed to each other, develop trust and confidence in each other and charge bullheadedly into dangerous situations, you can't help but hope there's a "Lethal Weapon II." It would be one of the few times a sequel would make sense and dollars.

Gibson is truly frightening as the cop about to go into orbit, and Glover is a standout as the down-to-earth lawman with very much to lose.

The film is all fast action, noisy stunts and huge, often unflattering close-ups, but it packs an undeniable wallop.

The pace never slows, the jokes never miss and the stunts never disappoint in this macho-dream of an actioner.

Lethal Weapon is a film teetering on the brink of absurdity when it gets serious, but thanks to its unrelenting energy and insistent drive, it never quite falls.

The skies are thick with whizzing bullets and strings being pulled by Shane Black's crude script and Richard Donner's cement-mixer direction. Predictably, the chicks-and-ammo stuff is punctuated by TV cop show repartee. [6 Mar 1987, p.36]

At bottom, Lethal Weapon isn't much. It's a big, shallow, flashy, buddy-buddy cop thriller; it attacks you like a stereophonic steamroller, flattening everything behind it. Snatches of "Hustle" "Magnum Force" and "48 HRS." float above this plot like scum on a polluted lake, and the holes in logic and mindless climax are (or should be) embarrassing. [6 Mar 1987, p.4]

Unfortunately, director Richard Donner doesn't pay much attention to text, subtext, or anything else; his 1986 film is empty glitz in search of a style, with arbitrary action substituting for ordinary narrative coherence.

The melodramatic clumsiness of the script, and, in one scene, its gratuitous endorsement of marijuana, betrays the youth of its writer, recent UCLA graduate Shane Black. And veteran director Richard Donner, whose credits include another cartoon movie, can't seem to thread the scenes together in any meaningful way. [6 Mar 1987, p.G]