The "broken" hero archetype
Most modern action movies treat their heroes like invincible plastic figurines. If they get hit, they just bounce back for the next CGI set piece. Lethal Weapon is different because it’s actually a noir masquerading as a buddy-cop flick. The first time we meet Riggs, he isn’t doing something cool; he’s contemplating a permanent exit. It is dark, uncomfortable, and arguably the most grounded performance in an action movie from that decade.
This creates a specific friction for parents. Your teen might be used to the breezy banter of the Bad Boys or Rush Hour franchises, but those movies are comedies with guns. This is a movie about a man with nothing to lose being paired with a man who has everything to lose. That stakes-driven chemistry is why the movie has an 86% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes decades later. It’s not just about the car chases; it’s about whether Riggs is actually going to pull the trigger on himself before the bad guys do it for him.
The 80s violence gap
If you grew up with this, you might remember the "I'm too old for this" jokes and forget the electrocution. There is a massive gulf between the sanitized, bloodless combat of the MCU and the visceral, mean-spirited action found here. In our guide on navigating 80s and 90s action movie violence, we talk about how "classic" status often masks content that would never fly in a PG-13 theater today.
The climax isn't a laser beam in the sky. It’s a brutal, muddy, hand-to-hand fight on a front lawn with a fire hydrant spraying everywhere. It feels personal. If your kid is sensitive to "mean" violence—where characters genuinely suffer and the villains are genuinely sadistic—this might be a bigger jump than you expect.
The Christmas factor
It’s a bit of a cliché now to debate whether Die Hard is a holiday movie, but Lethal Weapon has a much stronger claim to being a unconventional holiday movie. The entire plot is framed by the isolation of the season. The opening track is "Jingle Bell Rock," and the final beat is about finding a place to belong during the holidays.
Watching it through that lens makes the character arcs hit harder. It’s a story about a guy being pulled back from the brink of despair by a family that decides to let him in. If you’re looking for a way to engage a 16-year-old who thinks "family movies" are for babies, this is the perfect subversive choice for a December viewing. It delivers the explosions they want while sneaking in a surprisingly heavy story about mental health and recovery.
Why it still works
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes and fans on Letterboxd still rate this highly because it doesn't feel like a product of a committee. It feels like a movie made by people who actually liked the characters. Most "mismatched partner" movies today feel forced, but the bond between the leads here feels earned.
If your teen is a fan of modern police procedurals or heist movies, showing them the "source code" for the genre is a great move. Just be prepared for the 1987 of it all: the hair is big, the saxophones are loud, and the cigarettes are everywhere. It’s a time capsule of a specific era of masculinity that is both fascinating and, at times, a little jarring to look back on.
