As the film "Lethal Weapon" Bashny.Net

Elderly homicide cop investigating the death of a young girl who was under the influence of drugs, know that together with him will lead cop narkootdela. Upon hearing this news, the hero sees that just went down to the police station plainclothes guy pulls out a gun. With a cry of "Weapons!", He rushes to the "villain" to defuse it, but he throws a hero on the floor wrestling techniques, and taught him the gun. A moment later, the cop discovers that the man in civilian clothes is his new partner. "I'm too old for this shit" - sighs the police, who just turned 50 years old.





White and black police policeman - different races, one investigation. We are so used to seeing on the screen, "colorful" couple of cops, that sometimes it seems as if this is a classic stamp, born at the dawn of the history of cinema. But in fact, there are couples in Hollywood movies recently, and they have become a popular cliché only after one of the best police tapes 1980 - brilliant thriller, 1987's "Lethal Weapon».

When you look "politically correct" film like "Weapons", automatically imagine that the authors started with the restoration of racial harmony, and everything else in the film was invented only after the producers approved the idea of ​​a progressive story. Sometimes this is true, but in the case of "Weapons" was all very different, and when debutant Shane Black wrote the script, has made him a favorite of producers, he could not imagine that his plan will result in a Hollywood landmark racial politics.



When the twenty-Black, who studied at the University of theater, on the advice of his friend, the writer decided to try himself in the book of paintings, he quickly came up with a film wants to create. One of his favorite bands of all time was the "Dirty Harry", and he loved the police screen, which at the same time respected and colleagues are afraid for their intransigence. Therefore, Black chose the genre, often referred to as "urban western", but still did not build the script around a character who would be a replica of Harry Callahan.

For all his love of the "Harry", Black believed that his movie character should be psychologically difficult, vulnerable and human than "killing machine" and marked with a revolver. He wanted to show the cop not Superman, but a simple policeman who psychologically bent under his emotional burden. He also decided that the characters in his film should be two, older and younger. Let them first clash, but then also support each other in a time when more than glad to help them nowhere.

By studying the life of police officers in Los Angeles, Blake came across the term "psycho-pension". Cynically called the dismissal or suspension of the service due to a mental breakdown. Although such work is not hard to make the most terrible mental problems, a lot of police officers pretended symptoms of failure to get an odd holiday. For example, they claim the police station and started shouting that they were ready to shoot the first comer. Naturally, the authorities were aware of simulators, and it makes us suspect of cheating those cops who really was on the verge of irreparable.



When Black found out about it, he thought that he had found the plot plot. Let the main character is a cop who is teetering on the brink of suicide and whose colleagues did not take seriously, as is suspected in the simulation. To leave it at work and to keep under control, the bosses give his companions a balanced elderly detective cops ... and affect each other (one becomes wiser, and the other - insane) while investigating a drug-related murder. Then you and the thriller and detective and psychological tragicomedy - a much more rich and textured movie than a second-rate clone of "Dirty Harry».

As might be expected from a novice but ambitious author, the first draft of "Lethal Weapon" was a grand 138-page product (one page scenario usually corresponds to one minute of screen), full of sweeping action-packed scenes. This is a movie of his own accord can write a well-established authors, and today the scenario of "weapons" almost certainly would have remained in the writer's desk (or, more precisely, on his laptop drive). In the 1980s, however, there was a big demand for original scripts and Agent Black in just three days sold "Lethal Weapon" producer Joel Silver, who previously worked on "48 hours" and was considered a rising star in Hollywood producing genre.



Silver, however, immediately made a reservation that does not buy as much text as an idea, and that Black will have to do a lot to bring the script to the condition. In particular, the producer has advised "to tie the wick" in terms of the action scenes (the more complex the trick, the more difficult to find the money for the film) and focus on the fact that it was "chip", "weapon". That is on the relationship of the main characters. By the way, what kind of action-producer nowadays say that the movie should be less explosions and more verbal skirmishes?

Black agreed with the arguments of Silver and began processing "Weapons" and to deepen the characters. Many in his position would have strongly emphasized the differences between the characters, but Black wanted his "opposite" characters are attracted because, in essence, they have much in common. Thus, despite the difference in age, they both served in Vietnam. They both tend to family life, both inflexibility in police work, both can "go crazy" when it comes to their duty, and both can think about running away from the city, when it turns out that they were opposed to drug traffickers of the Army Special Forces (of course, they do not run away, but still feel the difference from the usual behavior of an action hero!). By and large, Martin Riggs and Roger Murto - it is one and the same person, and the differences between them are determined by age, life circumstances (in Murto - wife and children at Riggs - the memory of his wife and dirty trailer in the desert) and secondary character traits. Taking advantage of these similarities and differences, Black created a scenario in which the psychological tragicomedy was almost more than a police thriller.



That is what attracted "Arms," ​​directed by Richard Donner, director of Hollywood maestro and "Omen" and "Superman." Donner advised to read the script because he was considered a master of action cinema, but vivid and complex characters he has always been interesting tricks, and because in the 1980s he shot such films as the comedy "Toy" (a remake of the French hit of the same name) and the children's film -priklyuchenie "The Goonies". "Arms" immediately seize it, and so the studio Warner had already agreed to finance the setting, Donner soon began to search for the leading star.

In the scenario Black characters race was not mentioned, but it was clear that the two heroes - white. Especially older character, Detective Murto, whose name was relatively rare specifically Irish (she comes from the word meaning "sailor"). Recall that since Irish immigrants settled down in the United States, many of them nestled in the police and the Irish cop - it's one of the most popular Hollywood cliches.

In addition, in the mid-1980s a pair of "black cop and a white cop," was not that unimaginable, but still exotic. In the same "48 hours" the white cop partner was not a black cop and a black criminal, but in the action-comedy "Beverly Hills" as a temporary partner white black main character was in all respects a minor, a sinking in the shade of the character Eddie Murphy . It was subtle, but important nuance in the context of American racial politics, which has always tended to manifest or secret segregation (separate "our" main characters, a separate "your" main characters).



So first Donner considered a white-skinned candidates, and could well play Murto, such as Nick Nolte in "48 hours". But when the director asked for help from highly experienced casting director Marion Dougherty (the first in Hollywood, representatives of the profession, which won a separate screen titer), recommended that the role of the Murto black actor Danny Glover, mainly theatrical performer, just gleaming in the villainous role in the drama Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple." And Donner decided to do so - and without having to rewrite the script, based on a Negro, as was done during the work on "Beverly Hills." "Let Murto is black, and even if it would have almost no significance to the plot and the dialogues of the film - directed by thought. - It's time to shoot "daltonian" movie, where the Negro is just a character, not a comedic spice or a political statement (as in the classic 1960s detective "Heat of the Night") ».

Liberal activist with experience, Glover probably would have preferred a more politicized role, but Murto was amusing character and without "radical" overtones. Believable role model for young people and at the same time is not an idealized aging man with a bunch of family and personal problems - who refuse such a character? Besides Glover was interesting to play a hero who was 10 years his senior.



Council Doherty about Riggs was, on the contrary, it is quite predictable. Handsome Australian Mel Gibson from the "Mad Max" and "Bounty" was already known bad Hollywood professionals, and many were eager to present it to the public in a more mainstream tape than the failed at the box office Hollywood debut of actor "River" - social drama about the life of farmers. Thus Gibson knew how to play the half-crazed protagonist, and he, for all his foreign heroism, did not seem "unshakable chuvachkov" like Schwarzenegger or Eastwood. So it's perfect for the role of Riggs.

In real life, the two actors were much less common than their characters. In essence, they are nothing in common, other than the profession, country of birth (Gibson considered an Australian, but he was born in the US), and - at the time - dialect coach (Glover mastered southern reprimanded for "color" and Gibson learned to speak as an American). But when Donner gave them joint audition, they immediately worked and gave his characters with life and energy, which were only identified in the script. Another proof of the skill Doherty did not just considered a genius ...



After this triumph of casting Donner could only find the main villain - working on drug-thriller SWAT Joshua - find artists supporting roles and start shooting pictures with a significant, but not impressive for a 1986 budget of $ 15 million. As a result, Joshua played nominee "Oscar" for the musical biopic "Buddy Holly Story" Gary Busey (actor first portrayed the villain, but it turned out that it can be very frightening, and further Busey repeatedly to use it), and the role of the wife got a pop Murto -pevitsa 1960 Darlene Love, who after a career of failure in 1970 to retrain in an actress. Finally, the leader of the bandits, a retired general McAllister played TV actor Ryan Mitchell from the TV series "Dark Shadows" (the one who recently was awarded kinoremeyka by Tim Burton).

Before the start of filming of Gibson and Glover underwent a thorough on the stars and Hollywood standards a two-month police training. They pumped muscles, learn to deal with a police weapon, traveled around Los Angeles with real cops and watched how they behave and how to communicate with each other. But, of course, Hollywood-as usual, many have come up with themselves or borrowed from other films. Uncompromising realism in the police thriller - money down the drain!

The plot has been closely tied to Los Angeles, his manners, the atmosphere, climate and geography, and since for any reason to travel to other states and countries had not yet been taken (today "Hollywood" films made in Hollywood - its weight in gold), the tape was shot in the same place developed its action - around the sprawling metropolis and its environs.



The updated, rewrite the script "Lethal Weapon" no longer had supereffektnyh scenes like the explosion of the truck and filled with cocaine multimillion Hollywood "snow". Tryukachi mainly worked on the shooting, which in America are able to shoot with your eyes closed. Nevertheless, several impressive pieces in the film still remained, and they demanded more hard work.

Thus, the opening band scene in which the girl stoned jumped out from the balcony of a skyscraper right on the car standing in front of house, was complicated by the fact that the trick is not performed kaskadersha and debutante actress, Jackie Swanson, who by this stage was preparing himself Dar Robinson - at time, perhaps the world's best specialist stunt jumping without a parachute. Run a huge number of dizzying stunts without a single broken bone in his entire 19-year career, Robinson ridiculous died during a routine motorcycle stunt at the end of 1986 (it was already filming the picture "The Mystery of million dollars"), and the "Lethal Weapon" was devoted to his memory. To Swanson it landed safely, decorators painted so large air mat that when shooting in the dark and he seemed on top of the usual street with parked her car. That is why the scene in the film is interrupted at a time when she reaches the "vehicle."

In contrast to the starlet, Mel Gibson himself rarely perform tricks, and in a little bit dangerous scenes substituted for understudy Mickey Rogers. In the final hand to hand duel with Busey, however, Gibson had to fight himself. For the development and preparation of this scene were involved in three martial arts expert - specialists of capoeira, Brazilian ju-dzitsu and obscure style "dzheylhaus rock." This is akin to kickboxing and savate fighting style created by blacks in American prisons and the legend that goes back to the days of slavery and evolved from African fighting techniques. Unable to break into the final half of the city, Donner wanted this chamber, modest by the standards of boevikovym battle of two special forces viewers to remember, and so he used exotic weapons systems.

To remove the three-minute fragment creators "weapon" took four long nights filming and rehearsals. In this scene still got some improvised, as in the heat of battle, and Busey Gibson, had never engaged in the on-screen martial arts techniques were often confused.



Significant efforts by Gibson and demanded a scene in which his character, sitting in his trailer, trying to commit suicide. Special training for such surveys actor, of course, was not needed, but emotionally, this scene was so complicated that the first two attempts Gibson, in his view, failed. Only the third time, after a long break, he hit the mark and brought the operator and director to tears. Donner then even worried that Gibson went so into the role that can really do with something bad. But nothing happened. Incidentally, Gibson insisted that Riggs should try to shoot. In the script it was about tablets, but what a cop, and even former military, choose "female" death?

When March 6, 1987 "Lethal Weapon" was released, it immediately soared to first place at the box office the weekend and stayed there for three weeks before the release of "Blind Date" - a comedy with Bruce Willis, who at one time claimed to be the Riggs. But if the "Rendezvous" Blake Edwards is now considered a creative failure, the "weapon" was not only an annual hit ($ 120 million in worldwide box office), but also enduring classics. The civilized world was ready and equal partners of different color, and Gibson and Glover supported by a successful scriptwriter and director were experienced are brilliant and hilarious. Due to the last film sometimes called action-comedy, though in fact it is pretty somber thriller. But as his detective scenes were weaker than those in which Riggs and Murto just spend time together, alone or with family senior cop, the tape is not remembered as a cruel narkotriller as well as a positive "buddy film".



Making a lasting impression on the audience, and the Hollywood-"Lethal Weapon" gave rise to a lot of similar productions, although almost no one was able to recreate the depth and sincerity of creation and Black Donner.

As to the phrase about old age and shit, it certainly was not a unique creation of the writer. On his retirement in pretense or in truth, many complained about action heroes in Hollywood history.