MovieChat Forums > Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) Discussion > Whopping coincidences and absurdities

Whopping coincidences and absurdities


Whopping coincidences:
1) Riggs and Murtaugh are taken off the South African drug dealers case and assigned to a completely unrelated task: Protecting Leo Getz... and Getz just HAPPENS to be the accountant for those same South African drug dealers!
2) Vorstedt just happens to be the guy responsible for Riggs' wife's death.

Absurdities:
1) After they are violently attacked and nearly killed, Riggs just casually drops Rika off at her apartment instead of going straight to a police station/military base/bank safe deposit vault/somewhere/ANYWHERE.
2) Riggs and Murtaugh have to be the worst witness protectors in history (or would that be witless protectors?) as they are constantly leaving Leo alone and unprotected.
3) Classic "not in the script" moment: Vorstedt and his men tie Riggs in a straightjacket and throw him in the water. Wouldn't it have been better/quicker/safer just to shoot him?
4) Riggs and Murtaugh wouldn't have just been taken off a case, they would have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the amount of damage they caused and danger they exposed the public to in the first scene.

I know, I know, it's supposed to be mindless entertainment. And I did enjoy the film immensely when I first saw it nearly 30 years ago. But I have become far more critical and cranky in my old age.

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An additional element that bothers me is when you truly want to face it, Riggs & Murtaugh got their squad killed with their reckless behavior. They harass the South Africans despite being told not to & proceed to steal the note of the Alba Varden. Yes, what the South Africans are doing is illegal, but doesn't entitle them to go around acting so idiotic bending the law.

Indeed, with the further stupid things they do in the sequels that followed, this duo actually became the villains!

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Riggs & Murtaugh got their squad killed with their reckless behavior

Yes, very good point!

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The straight jacket scene, in the police station. The baddies just happen to put him in a straight jacket and throw him in the ocean. We KNEW the first time he would escape. He looked like he escaped faster the second time the jacket was on him. They coulda shot him and then threw him in the ocean, probably how they killed Rika.

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I know it's four years late to the party but where the hell is everyone getting these straight jackets from ? I've worked in mental health for 16 yrs worked with some very violent ppl some never recovered and I've never seen one straight jacket in real life, they must all be into kinky sex stuff

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More absurdities:

The South Africans first try to scare the police into backing off, by threatening Murtaugh's family. "So you tell your people to back off." Back off from what? Surely the police are dealing with numerous cases, and not just the high speed car chase scene.

The helicopter coming to the bad guy's aid in the aforementioned high speed car chase - wouldn't it be very easy to track down this helicopter?

And why the hell would they conduct drug deals in krugerrands, anyway? If they were buying drugs, who would accept krugerrand as payment? If they were selling drugs, who would pay in krugerrand?

The assassination of police officers later in the film - no amount of diplomatic immunity would protect them from this one.

At the very end, where Rudd tauntingly says "diplomatic immunity" after emptying a magazine into Riggs, while Murtaugh aims his revolver at him. Riggs and Murtaugh had been acting illegally when they assaulted the ship and killed lots of South Africans, and they hadn't respected diplomatic immunity up to that point - so what made Rudd think Murtaugh would start now?

In the scene where Riggs shoots up the fish tank, he is fascinated by the weapon one of the bad guys carries. Some piece of hardware, he says. Hasn't even seen anything like it on the force, he says. What was this marvel of ballistic technology? A H&K MP5K.

And then, of course, the fact that every piece of evidence gathered from all the illicit activities by Riggs and Murtaugh would have been inadmissible in court, so there'd be no reason for the South Africans to go on a killing spree anyway. But once they did, how could they expect to win? Even if they manage to defeat an entire police department, that would only mean they had succeded in escalating the conflict such that the national guard would be called into play. And even if that failed, the US Army proper. And by the time we had gotten to that, the diplomatic status of the villains and tacit approval of the South African government would mean that these acts of aggression would be tantamount to a war declaration. Would South Africa be prepared, or even willing to go against the United States?

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Yeah agree with your points, though RE: the helicopter

radar only works above a certain height.
so planes and helicopters use transponder things, GPS / stuff like that around town, but can be turned off technically speaking, so anyone breaking bad just turns it off.

I thought that bit of the scene was actually fairly legit, chopper out of no where, no time to get out of the cars in a good spot, with full auto fire coming at you.
Looks like the cops only had handguns, maybe a pump action shotty.

I'd be behind a car, but bullets can go through engine blocks of cars, not sure about those guns though, they looked like 9MM, need something bigger to go through engine block. Or hollow point 9mm does it. not 100% on that.

ACTUALLY, now I think about it, same action sequence, when Riggs goes to run up the ramp to chase after the guy in the car, he runs RIGHT BY a parked cop car. As if he didn't just get in and go after the guy? The keys would of been in it, good to go.
But whats he expecting anyway, hes running after it, then Murtaugh cant go any faster cause hes in the way, then they hold up like 5-6 cop cars behind them. I'm amazed they caught up with him

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No 9mm will go through an engine block. Even a high powered rifle would at most damage the engine block. Possible pierce it but certainly not past though it. If someone is shooting at you the part of a car you want to hide behind is the engine because it is the thickest part of any car.

Also this was in the 80s before GPS was everywhere.

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Actually krugerrands would be a good way to move money at time period, gold is gold and it was only banned in some countries and even then it was easy to melt.

And actually even if the baddie had shot the chief of police on the steps of the state house the worst that could have happened would be expulsion from the US. Diplomatic immunity covers everything and at best the US could have asked the SA gov to drop the immunity which they could easily refuse to do

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Krugerrands would be a terrible choice at any point in time for drug deals. You want the money to be as untraceable as possible, hence money laundering operations. I can think of little as easily traceable as Krugerrands. Even if you melt them down, that's another link in the chain you could do without. Not only that, but gold is very heavy, which makes transportation more difficult.

As for diplomatic immunity, it does not cover everything. It does on paper, but not in practice. If the baddie had shot the chief of police on the steps of the state house, the very BEST thing that could have happened would be expulsion from the US. In reality, US authorities would detain him indefinitely until they got a formal permission from the South African government to prosecute him in the US. And unless South Africa was prepared to go through an EXTREMELY MAJOR diplomatic crisis with the most powerful nation in the world, they would comply.

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Krugerrands are untraceable they have no serial numbers on them like actual paper money. And 223 cubic inches of gold at that time would have been worth a million dollars. The same amount in 100 dollar bills would have occupied 780 cubic inches so more than 3 times as much space. If you are shipping money the gold would be much less bulky and easier to move than paper money.

As for melting it down, it is easy to do and is not uncommon at that time for jewelers to swap loose diamonds for gold. The gold for moving large sums is not only a good way for drug or arms dealers to transfer value but is also the way governments often do it.

As for diplomatic immunity, you can speculate all you want on whether the South Africans would have waived immunity or not... given the unfriendly terms between the two countries at the time they very well may not have. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal not to, at most it would have resulted in the US stopping their feet and expelling some diplomats but little more than that.

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Not to mention, shouldn't Rudd and his henchman have Consular Immunity? He worked for a consulate as shown in the film. It's apparently not as powerful as Diplomatic Immunity.

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The only ones that would have had diplomatic immunity would have been the top officials and deputies... It was never clear in the movie just what level the bad guys had. The consular immunity would have been useless if the person with it had committed any crime on American soil. The other thing that was a bit difficult to understand was why they acted like the residence in California had some special status. The embassy for South Africa in Washington DC is the only building that would have been afforded the types of treatment they gave in the movie.

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Serial numbers are immaterial - no one in the US deals in kruegerrands, so the obvious place to start asking questions would be the South African embassy. Perhaps a good choice if you have no connection to South Africa, but if that were the case, how did you land the kruegerrands?

And if you melt them down, they won't be kruegerrands anymore. But gold is a physically heavy currency, prohibitively so for illegal means in large quantities, and again, far more easily traced than dollarbills. After all, who deals in actual gold? Not many, so the people to question are going to be few in number. Governments transport gold, sure, but they do so with armoured trucks, which are kept tabs on at regular intervals. A bit too conspicuous for drug deals.

As for reactions against South Africa, if the South African embassy was involved in the deliberate warfare against American law enforcers, the reactions would not have been American alone. Not only would there be international reactions from the entire Western world, but this would actually constitute a casus belli. Remember, the embassy acts on behalf of the nation it represents, and if that nation protects that embassy in face of wrong doing, this is nothing short of an endorsement.

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serial numbers are the way lots of people get caught moving ill gotten gains. And space is what matters most to people moving large amount of value. If you think a drug dealer at the higher levels would rather have the pay-off in money instead of gold you've been watching too many movies. The drug dealer that is accepting millions isn't going to worry about anyone trying to rob them only in being caught and it is a lot easier to move something 1/3rd the size which is what matters most.

The immunity portion of the show never made sense, and never if for no other reason than the only real embassy would be in Washtington DC not in California.

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Yeah I know what you mean, think I watched the whole lethal weapon series 13 times at-least, mainly in my teen years, few times in my 20's. Few things I didn't pick up on until now.

But now 30, living with my partner and taking a lot more responsibility for my family unit etc, it just boggles my mind why Riggs didn't take themselves back to the police station,

I just watched it few mins ago, and I'm like. Why is he not considering that they are killers, and they might not trust this chick and high chance they will just get rid of her

And Riggs has been so sad since his wife died, and this blondie comes along and now shes dead. So sad! dam man

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I think it can all be explained in the opening 'Looney toons' WBros logo ..

Its basically a live action cartoon

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all 4 films contain a coincidence that puts them on the case or leads them to the killers. even part 1 has them going to dixie's just at the time the house blows up and then both riggs and mr joshua happen to have the same tattoo.

also coincidences do happen in real life.

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Number 1:

That's how movies work.

No need to go on.

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The way Riggs and Rika act after a pair of choppers swooped down and sprayed the trailer, and Riggs kills most of them, is the most absurd part.

They talk about it as if they just got thrown out after gatecrashing somebody's wedding party.

Also. When Riggs escapes the bag and climbs out of the water, he incapacitates one of the dudes just by kicking him in the stomach are. The guy rolls around like he's received multiple injuries. Long enough for Riggs to deal with the other heavy.

Notice how Riggs's dislocated arm is fully functional when he's getting himself out of the straight jacket, lifting himself out of the water and beating two guys to death. But the rest of the time his dislocated arm is this lifeless dead weight until he pops his shoulder back in again.

So in the montage of the cops being killed, two of the cops are blown up taking their morning swim and doing their morning work out respectively, then cut to all the other cops having their regular poker night hours later as if nothing has happened. BOOM!. And it's only then that the cops get mad about their buddies getting iced. Murtagh had his house bombed the day before!

And why are the bad guys hanging around Murtagh's destroyed and vacated house the following night? Just in the off chance that he came back to watch a video that might give him a clue?

And another thing. Riggs isn't mad. He's just obnoxious. All the Lethal Weapons are mostly trash if you think about them for more than two seconds.

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