‘The Naked Gun’ Review: Liam Neeson’s Deadpan Is Perfect Ammo for This Outrageous Comedy

Liam Neeson has spent the last decade growling his way through a string of action thrillers, but in The Naked Gun, he trades vengeance for absurdity and it works. Playing Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic bumbling detective, Neeson leans into the lunacy with a straight face and a gravelly voice that somehow makes the nonsense land harder. It’s a performance that’s both self-aware and surprisingly committed, anchoring a film that’s gleefully unhinged from start to finish. Neeson’s casting was a risky casting move on paper, but it turns out to be the film’s not-so-secret weapon.

The Naked Gun is not a reinvention but a faithful extension of the franchise’s chaotic DNA, it doesn’t try to out-clever its roots. It confidently jogs along into hilarious idiocy, with a scattering of visual gags, and some total nonsense. Plenty of it hits the mark; some of it flies wide but that’s ok.

Director Akiva Schaffer, along with writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, revives the franchise with a barrage of gags that range from the sublimely stupid to the genuinely clever. And Neesons’s performance is so straight-faced, it borders on surreal. The film doesn’t try to reinvent the spoof genre, it just wants to make you laugh, it isn’t afraid to push boundaries, though it rarely crosses them.

The plot, such as it is, involves Drebin investigating the suspicious death of a man behind the wheel of a self-driving electric car. The trail leads to a tech mogul named Richard Cane (Danny Huston), whose sinister invention—the P.L.O.T. Device—threatens to control minds across Los Angeles. It’s a setup that’s barely coherent, but coherence isn’t the point. The story is just a scaffold for the jokes, and the jokes come fast.

Pamela Anderson, as the noir-inspired femme fatale Beth proves to be another surprise, she plays the dead man’s sister and a true-crime author with a penchant for dramatic entrances. Her chemistry with Neeson is unexpectedly charming, she’s game for everything and seemingly in on the joke, her scenes with Neeson tread the line between spoof and sincerity.

A studio comedy that’s unafraid to be dumb, loud, and unapologetically juvenile.

Supporting roles, like Paul Walter Hauser’s Capt. Ed Hocken Jr., lend just enough structure to stop the film from collapsing into pure sketch comedy. And yet, some of the funniest sequences do feel like self-contained skits. Together, the duo stumbles through a series of increasingly bizarre scenarios, including a moment of crowd violence so perfectly timed it could’ve been lifted straight from Airplane!.

If there’s one mark against the film, it’s that Neeson although committed and surprisingly funny can’t quite replicate that peculiar, guileless innocent charm that made Leslie Nielsen’s original Drebin so unforgettable. Nielsen made you believe the stupidity wasn’t just in the script, but in the soul of the man. Neeson’s Drebin is more calculated. Still funny, but a little less magical.

Ultimately, The Naked Gun reboot is a rare beast: a studio comedy that’s unafraid to be dumb, loud, and unapologetically juvenile. It doesn’t pretend to be smart, and that’s part of its charm and if you’re in the mood for relentless silliness delivered by someone who used to threaten kidnappers for a living, The Naked Gun is oddly satisfying, it’s a film that earns its laughs…and its place in the franchise.

The Naked Gun is now playing in cinemas worldwide.

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