In "Lethal Weapon," Danny Glover plays Detective Roger Murtaugh, the older Los Angeles police officer partnered with Mel Gibson’s Detective Martin Riggs. Their contrasting personalities drive the film’s action and comedy.
Murtaugh is a veteran detective approaching retirement, with a family and a strong desire for a quieter life. Riggs, by contrast, is a volatile widower whose reckless behavior makes him difficult to work with. The partnership begins uneasily, but the two officers gradually develop trust while investigating a drug-trafficking and organized-crime case.
Glover’s Murtaugh provides the grounded counterpoint to Riggs’s impulsiveness. His famous reaction to being “too old for this” became one of the movie’s recurring lines and a defining part of the character’s identity. The film was directed by Richard Donner and written by Shane Black.
Released in 1987, "Lethal Weapon" helped establish the buddy-cop formula that pairs mismatched partners whose professional conflict turns into friendship. Glover and Gibson reunited as Murtaugh and Riggs in three sequels: "Lethal Weapon 2" in 1989, "Lethal Weapon 3" in 1992, and "Lethal Weapon 4" in 1998.