Original caricature by Jeff York of Liam Neeson in THE NAKED GUN (copyright 2025)
God love Liam Neeson.
He brings the same concentration and intensity to the comedy THE NAKED GUN as he did in the thriller TAKEN and even the searing drama that was SCHINDLER’S LIST. Neeson is one focused actor who gives the same to all he does and when it comes to this farce, we in the audience are all the better for it.
That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of humor at play already in this reboot of the 1988 classic spoof starring Leslie Nielsen. Let’s face it, the procedural genre has only become more worthy of ridicule since THE NAKED GUN premiered in theaters in 1988 after starting as the TV sitcom POLICE SQUAD six years before that. Cop shows and procedural movies were easy targets then, and four decades since have only added more grist to the satiric mill. Director Akiva Shaffer and his co-screenwriters Dan Gregor and Doug Mand have not only found more ways to milk laughs out of the genre – vamping the hard-boiled narration, gritty cinematography, and histrionic scoring of modern crime dramas – but they’ve cast cinema’s biggest action hero to front their farce.
And sure is fun watching Neeson give this venture his all without winking at the audience. He seems to give it the same actorly immersion as he did such serious stage fare like THE CRUCIBLE and ANNA CHRISTIE, or his dramatic turns in THE MISSION, ROB ROY, KINSEY, and yes, Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust opus. Sure, Neeson has done lighter fare before, be it LOVE, ACTUALLY or LIFE’S TOO SHORT, and even a thriller like TAKEN contained moments of near self-parody, but never as outsized as here in THE NAKED GUN. His casting is probably the funniest part of this movie, just as the casting of Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, and Peter Graves was in AIRPLANE back in 1980 starting this all. There really is utter genius in asking an actor to bring the same performance they’ve done in dozens of straight roles to such silly material. It worked four decades ago. And it works like gangbusters today.
Here, Neeson plays Sgt. Frank Drebin, Jr., the son of the Nielsen character from the franchise, and like father like son, Junior approaches his job with the same clueless machismo. Thus, when he’s assigned to a case involving the theft of an electronic gizmo called the P.L.O.T. Device (tee hee), Drebin and his partner Ed Hocken, Jr. (Paul Walter Hauser) give the investigation the surly swagger we’ve seen from every cop from Dirty Harry to the guys on CSI. They gulp coffee like its going out of style, talk in hardboiled jargon, and rough up suspects because well, that’s what cops do in the genre all the time. It practically plays as parody merely as written, without really trying that hard for laughs, but there are plenty of offbeat visual gags and hoary puns to make it all play like a Mad magazine spoof come to life.
Drebin even has an axe to grind as the theft of the gizmo occurred during the film’s opening action set piece when he disrupted a robbery dressed as a little school girl before ripping off his mask and revealing a 6’4″ super cop tossing his lollipop around like it’s a Ninja star. (It’s especially funny that Drebin Jr.’s fighting style isn’t too far off of the same “particular set of skills” that Neeson’s Bryan Mills displayed taking out the Eurotrash in TAKEN.) Now, Drebin’s out to retrieve the device to close the case, despite villains, a femme fatale, and his own flustered captain (CCH Pounder) getting in his way and slowing his progress.
The film keeps the focus on the plot without drifting too far afield for a gag, and it works all the more because everyone plays it so straight. And while the fight scenes may use silly props and employ absurdly silly sight gags, a lot of is shown on screen would be right at home in a Jason Statham actioner. Schaffer crams a lot of visual information into every minute, demanding we pay close attention, and most every joke plays be it pratfalls, puns or throwaway lines.
Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport, the femme fatale, and she’s as game as everyone else in the cast. At one point in the film, Beth jumps onto a nightclub stage to sing a jazz ditty to distract the villain so Drebin can sneak past a guard into an off-limits area. She starts scatting as part of her repertoire, and it’s truly awful singing, but you’d never know that from the straight face Anderson gives her character while shrieking. Oh, and that villain she is trying to distract is played by veteran character actor Danny Huston. He’s played such bad guys in so many straight films before, his casting may seem almost too on the nose. Still, he’s redeemed because he plays this role exactly the same as he’s played all this villains in straight films.
Comedy may have been waning on the big screen for the past few years due to an over-saturation of specials, late night hosts, and mediocre sitcoms. Or perhaps it’s due to the darkening of America’s vibe post/9/11 and the pandemic. Maybe audiences are too tribal even to agree on what’s funny or not these days. No matter, I think THE NAKED GUN should resonate with most. Such satire still plays sharp and can go high-brow or low-brow. This one is fun, well-played, and even charming at times. So, some gags flounder; there’s always another coming in mere seconds to land better. Most beneficial is the up-for-it-all Neeson who knows just how to play it straight and get us laughing.
Talk about a particular set of skills…
