I Watch Films: The Naked Gun (2025)
The Naked Gun (2025)
Lt Frank Dreben Junior (Liam Neeson) stops a bank robbery by disguising himself as a little girl. However the robbery was actually to steal the P.L.O.T. Device (Primordial Law Of Toughness). However the Chief re-assigns him due to his over the top risky police style and he goes to investigate the death of software engineer Simon Davenport. He finds several clues, including a matchbook, but thinks it’s a suicide.
Simon’s sister Beth (Pamela Anderson), a crime novelist, thinks it was murder. Dreben tries to put her off and goes and sees Simon’s boss, tech billionaire Simon Cane. He and Cane hit it off, Cane donating a self-driving electric car to the police, and inviting Dreben to his nightclub, which has the same logo as the matchbook.
The deposit box in the bank robbery is revealed to be Simon’s, linking the cases. Cane’s plan is revealed to us the audience; by broadcasting the P.L.O.T. Device at New Year, everyone watching will revert to violent beast-like behaviour. This will cull the population while the billionaires ride it out in the bunker. Still ignorant of this Frank goes to the nightclub. Beth distracts Simon while Frank fights a lot of henchmen to get the security footage. This reveals that Simon met a journalist.
Simon complains to the Chief and Frank is taken off the case(s). He and Beth spend a romantic and magical weekend in a snow lodge; when they return Frank is framed for killing the journalist. He attempts to escape in his car, which is taken over by Cane in one of the most hilarious sequences of the film; Frank tries to escape by breaking the windscreen but crashes into things filling the car with balloons, bees, and then hits a replacement windscreen sealing himself back in.
Obviously everything comes together at the New Year’s Event with the P.L.O.T. Device in the balls that drop for the New Year, and Dreben filmed without his trousers. This is a comedy, an attempt to make the Naked Gun series work in the 21st Century. It’s a suitable successor, with Neeson’s deadpan timing pretty good. Occasionally the film tries too hard, feeling anxious that we get a joke, and almost every time it’s not good, would have been better to let it just go by, the next joke’s coming in 30 seconds. And to be honest, not everything in the original Naked Gun films was good either, skating by on a few setpieces and Leslie Nielsen’s innocent buffoonery.
Watch This: Comedy crime film with many, many, many jokes
Don’t Watch This: A lot of bad jokes that don’t land
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