The Naked Gun (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Akiva Schaffer

Starring:  Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Danny Huston, Paul Walter Hauser, CCH Pounder, Kevin Durand

This Naked Gun reboot strains mightily to achieve the inspired lunacy of the original films created by the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team which also gave us Airplane! and Kentucky Fried Movie.  The ZAZ guys got this down to a science.  Sure, it was laffaminit verbal and visual gags flying at the screen, but most of them landed.  Akiva Schaffer's 2025 version attempts the same formula, but even at a meager 85-minute running time, The Naked Gun loses steam and drags itself to its conclusion.  

Until then, The Naked Gun lands a few big laughs with Lt. Frank Drebin (Neeson) of Police Squad narrating the proceedings in the same deadpan manner as Leslie Nielsen did in the originals.  Neeson is up to the task of filling Nielsen's shoes as the unflappable Drebin, whose job is to walk through the film without hinting that any of this is being played for laughs.  I'd tell you the narration gags which work the best, but I wouldn't want to spoil them for you.  

The plot?  Not that such a thing matters, but Drebin and his partner Ed Hocken (Hauser) are investigating a murder which leads to tech billionaire Richard Cane (Huston), who on New Year's Eve plans to utilize a P.L.O.T. device (get it?) which will turn off the sensors in the brain which control violent impulses and create a worldwide riot.  Why is he doing this?  This is not the type of movie where you ask such questions.  Drebin and Beth Davenport (Anderson), the sister of one of the early murder victims, team up to take down Cane and fall in love in the process.  They spend a weekend in a remote cabin in a three-way relationship with an animated snowman who soon feels left out in the cold...so to speak.  How?  This is not the type of movie where you ask such questions.

So what do we make of The Naked Gun?  It contains enough laughs to be worth 85 minutes of your time, but the inevitable comparisons to the Nielsen movies are present, and in many ways drag it down.  

The Unholy Trinity (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Richard Gray

Starring:  Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Brandon Lessard, Veronica Ferres, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tim Daly

Reviewing The Unholy Trinity presents a challenge for me.  I saw it back in June before the end of its brief theatrical run and I haven't gotten around to reviewing it until now.  The details are fuzzy, but I still recall the movie as a workmanlike, traditional western which wasn't made to last in people's memories until awards season.  It is only August and I'm sure it was mostly forgotten already even by those who starred in it. 

This isn't to denigrate the people involved in the movie.  It's a throwback to the age when westerns were prolific and escapist entertainment.  There is no deep messaging in The Unholy Trinity, just shootouts and heroes triumphing over villains.  The movie begins with a hanging.  I assure I'll have to look up some of the names of the participants in The Unholy Trinity.  The man being hanged is Henry Broadway Sr. (Daly) who tells his son Henry Jr. (Lessard) before he's executed and tells him the sheriff of a small Montana town is responsible for framing him and that there's gold in there hills!  Henry finds the sheriff, an Irishman named Gabriel Dove (Brosnan), and Henry draws a gun on him.  Gabriel, with plenty of aplomb, informs Henry that the sheriff he's looking for is dead and agrees to help him in his quest to find who framed his father...if he was framed at all.

Henry learns his father wasn't the swell guy he thought he was and his former partner St. Christopher (Jackson) promises Henry Jr. that he will split the gold with him once it's found.  Jackson brings his usual bombast to the role and seems to having so much fun that we wonder if he was on the wrong movie set.  Brosnan is a sturdy hero while Lessard's Henry Jr. is someone we don't find ourselves caring about much.  I recall the shootout in the end where St. Christopher meets his demise and that will pretty much end my review.