REEL | Liam Neeson Strips Down to 'The Naked Gun'

"Once you kill a man for revange, there's no going back."

Paramount Pictures / Fuzzy Door Productions

Directed by The Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer and produced by comedian Seth MacFarlane, aging star Liam Neeson hysterically parodies his own late-career, hard-boiled action filmography in both a reboot and legacy sequel to The Naked Gun slapstick police comedy trilogy that was in turn based on the 1982 Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker-created Police Squad! television series.

Neeson plays Detective Frank Drebin Jr.—Frank Sr. memorably portrayed by Canadian screen legend Leslie Nielsen—acting with the perfect, self-serious deadpan delivery without any winking or knowing tone. A wonderfully cast Pamela Anderson riffs on both the blonde bombshell and femme fatale archetypes while turning his world investigation upside down. Comic actor Paul Walter Hauser, as Frank's partner, fits the offish cop sidekick role quite well.

Both Danny Huston and Kevin Durand co-star as the appropriately humourless villains, adding colour to the stereotypical cop action movie genre they are lovingly mocking. Scripted by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Schaffer, their blistering spoof of a script is so jam-packed with countless clever jokes, sight gags, and plenty of dumb but fun humour throughout the brisk eighty-minute running time.

This new version of The Naked Gun remakes more of the same kind of trademack zippy comedy from the original ZAZ-produced show and films. Neeson and Anderson play it deadly straight as great foils to each other. Shaffer's sharp comedic instincts keep everything amusing, filled with wildly silly jokes packed in every frame of every second.


More | YVArcade / Indiewire / Inverse