FILM REVIEW: "THE NAKED GUN" HITS ITS TARGET
Los Angelese - "the big apple", "the happiest place on earth" - only it aint so happy, it's as down and out as a Snow White's little known Eighth Dwarf, Junkie. It's a city with a bigger crime wave than the Crimean Peninsula. It's a city in need of a clean, and brother, Police Squad's got the Glen 20.
After a group of armed thugs steal the mysterious P.L.O.T device, Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr of the infamous Police Squad, rises above his paycheck and jurisdiction to thwart the insidious criminal organisation responsible.
One century minus six and a half decades since Leslie Nielsen's bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin made his big screen debut, Liam Neeson (Taken, Taken 2, Taken 3) leads this revival as Lieutenant Frank Drebin’s son, Lieutenant Frank Drebin Junior. Neeson, an Oscar nominated, late career action connoisseur, is a perfect successor to Nielsen, not only in initials, but in his commitment to looking the fool and utilising his classically trained capabilities to deliver each joke as if it were a line from Schindler's List.
Like any good detective story, there's a blonde. A blonde to make a nun blush. Neeson's fatale finds its femme in Pamela Anderson, striding confidently back to stardom and similarly not afraid to play the fool. Neeson and Anderson's chemistry is as potent as acetone in an amateur artist's studio. In the fringes is a strong supporting cast constantly committed to the bit: Paul Walter Hauser as Drebins left-hand man, Ed Hocker Jr; Danny Huston as an Elon Musk archetype; and CCH Pounder of The Shield, as her character from The Shield.
In the director's chair, and assumingly his car and bed too, is Akiva Schaffer of comedy group The Lonely Island. Schaffer fills the films trim 85-minute runtime with more visual gags than a hot-dog eating competition, and more puns than an episode of The Punisher (I haven't seen the show, I'm assuming from the title). The Naked Gun's humour is outlandish, excessive, and borderline experimental. Not every joke hits its target (some maim and outright kill innocent bystanders) but it hits far more than it misses, and so long as you can stomach the films unapologetic goofiness, there's a gag in here for everyone.
Like a juggler tossing machetes, Lorne Balfe's score adds a level of intensity that hardly seems necessary but is certainly welcome. Balfe plays with the strings and themes he perfected behind the scenes of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. Neeson's stunts are far less than that of Cruise, but Balfe makes abseiling a disco-ball seem as thrilling as base jumping a mountain on a motorbike.
The Naked Gun is a fitting successor to its source, sharing the original films sensibilities and humour whilst seamlessly parodying the state of modern action cinema. Neeson is a fitting and earnest successor to Nielsen. Like Frankenstein, the doctor, Hollywood's decade of digging up the corpses of forgotten franchise has begun to rot (and grow sentient and kill the people they love, and chase them through all the corners of the known world accursing their rotten existence and explaining the cons of playing God) - but I am happy to announce that The Naked Gun is the rare revival that’s actually a welcome return.
Dinosaurs be damned. Ghostbusters be gone. I don't know what they're doing with Star Wars these days but to hell with it also! Fans of the original Naked Gun will find their expectations satisfied, and a new audience can bask in the glory of Police Squad buffoonery.
4 / 5
The Naked Gun is in theatres nationwide August 21st.
