Mad Max (1979); The Graduate (1967); Lethal Weapon 4 (1998); Loaded Weapon 1 (1993); The Walker (2007)

Watching the Lethal Weapon series and reading about Mad Max (1979) in a recent issue of Empire, we decided to give the latter a spin and to find out why Mel Gibson hit big. I enjoyed the movie, it was clearly cheaply made but there's a lot of fun to be had and what action there is is well-directed and visceral. The violence is cartoonish but wince-inducing, especially when Max gets his arm run over by a motorbike. The Australian locations are gorgeously shot, and altogether the movie holds up as great fun. 

For a break from Mel Gibson we watched The Graduate (1967), the movie that made Dustin Hoffman a household name, and another 'classic'. I really liked this - the characters, the actors, the witty script, and the excellent direction all add up to a movie that has quite rightly gone down as a gem of cinema history. Hoffman is a delight as the awkward Benjamin Braddock who stumbles on an affair with 'cougar' (as they'd call her nowadays) Mrs Robinson, played deliciously by Anne Bancroft. Mike Nichols directs the movie in a stylised way that doesn't distance you from the action, rather it adds commentary to the youthful timidity of Benjamin. Hoffman's performance is very funny, one of his best ever, up there with Rain Man, and I'd quite happily watch this again soon. 

We finished off our run of Lethal Weapon movies with the final in the series, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), which came several years after the last sequel and added Chris Rock and Jet Li to a cast that had already grown to encompass Joe Pesci and Rene Russo. Packed with memorable stunts (such as Riggs fight on a house-moving wagon) and more comedy than before, LW4 is another strong entry in a series that has no real weak link. The fights are just as bloody as in the first movie, and the script has the decency to point out that Gibson and Glover are indeed getting 'too old for this shit', and their storylines are advanced through Riggs' imminent fatherhood, and Murtaugh's grandfatherhood. Pesci is at his least annoying here, but then he is opposite Chris Rock, so maybe he's just less annoying by comparison. This is a fitting end to the series, and I hope they don't try to make any more, because the stars definitely would be too old - they couldn't pull it off like Bruce Willis did in the superb Die Hard 4.0.

Following the Lethal Weapon series we revisited National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) which parodies several films, but none more so than Lethal Weapon. There are direct references such as Emilio Estevez's Colt going for a walk to show off his naked butt, Colt's/Rigg's trailer getting shot up by the bad guys in helicopters (in a brilliant Bruce Willis cameo), and Samuel L. Jackson's Luger sitting on the toilet parodying the classic LW2 bomb scene - but this time the character is just taking a shit. Other send ups include Basic Instinct's 'gratuitous beaver shot', Silence of the Lambs, and Rambo, but it's the LW references that are funniest. While not quite as good as Hot Shots!, Loaded Weapon 1 is a good laugh, full of hilarious performances from Whoopi Goldberg, William Shatner, Denis Leary and Tim Curry.

I enjoyed all of the movies above over the last week or so, and they all had a lot to recommend them. Unfortunately I can't say the same for The Walker (2007), a movie in which Woody Harrelson plays gay as Carter Page, a companion of high society Washington women, including Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall and Kristin Scott Thomas. This might have worked as some sort of comedy, but it's far too serious and becomes a murder-mystery-thriller type affair when the lover of Scott Thomas' character is killed and Page attempts to keep her out of it and find out whodunnit. Harrelson tackles the role in much the same way as Heath Ledger handled gay in Brokeback Mountain, by mumbling almost incoherently the whole way through. It's hard to warm to Page, or any of the characters really, apart from Lauren Bacall's society woman who doesn't get enough screen time. As the movie wears on in a po-faced manner the answers to the mystery provide little revelation or interest and there's not much of a satisfying conclusion. For a film with an interesting premise, it all fell a little flat.