Bird on a Wire (1990)

Mel Gibson's mullet and wild-eyed "loose cannon" routine feels self-conscious and tired here - after Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 - but he and Goldie Hawn generate chemistry together, and occasional laughs, as former lovers fleeing killers from his pre-witness protection life, and helping bind the wafer-thin plot, action and comedy together into a palatable something is the Neville Brothers' easy-listening cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On A Wire.

★★★☆☆

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Daddy's Home 2 (2017)

The 2017 Bad Moms sequel also perpetuated its comedy by introducing an older generation and in doing so, took the focus off what audiences liked in number one - the moms - but Daddy's Home manages to retain the feel by making the granddads replicas of the dads - it's the same joke being played out again in a movie that is most funny when Will Ferrell is doing his Chevy Chase National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation impersonation.

★★★☆☆

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Apocalypto (2006)

Mel Gibson turns his story of clashing civilisations into a thrilling chase - a Mayan The Fugitive - and shows his complete assurance as director with unflinching depictions of brutality including not just one, not two, but three unhurried scenes showing the heads of human sacrifices being bowled down the side of a Chichen Itza-like pyramid, brutality decried by critics as historically inaccurate and racist, but the movie is nonetheless remarkable for having been a huge box office success despite its decidedly un-box-office 16th Century setting and its cast of mostly non-actors speaking the Yucatec Maya language.

★★★★☆

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Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

As a kid, I was mad about this buddy cop sequel to Lethal Weapon that reunites Riggs and Murtaugh on a case investigating a rascist drug-dealing South African diplomat, but now, watching it again, the extent of its success beggars belief with nothing in it even closely resembling real police work and while the zippy story offers plenty of humour and tension between the cop duo and the bad guy, it is otherwise about as complex as a two-hour fistfight.

★★★☆☆

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Lethal Weapon (1987)

One interesting thing about this buddy cop action movie is the nostalgic image of its young, lithe and mulleted star, Mel Gibson - he plays cop-with-a-death-wish Riggs who partners with police officer and grounded family man Murtaugh (Danny Glover) to break a drug-smuggling ring - but the most interesting thing is how popular an action flick this was, spawning three sequels despite essentially being a protracted fist fight - largely plot-free, shallow, ridiculously macho, devoid of any creative flourishes and completely free of special effects.

★★★☆☆

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Edge of Darkness (2010)

A policeman's daughter is killed and he investigates, learning of her secret life and involving himself in a nasty corporate intrigue, in this slight thriller given an unwarranted, sprawling, epic Heat-like treatment.

★★☆☆☆

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Signs (2002)

This movie about a Pennsylvanian family struggling to maintain normalcy as they monitor media reports of a series of strange goings-on across the globe, benefits greatly from having been made by M Night Shyamalan while he was still committed to making good movies, and before its lead, Mel Gibson, embarked on a series of strange goings-on around the world all of his own.

★★★★☆

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