The Naked Gun (2025)

Director: Akiva Schaffer

Cast: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Huston

Have I Seen It Before: Nope! Might have seen it in theaters, but time is finite, and certain movies only play at certain theaters. Such is life. Really looked forward to it showing up on Paramount +, though.

Yes, I am ashamed.

Did I Like It: Great comedies surprise you. So, maybe, The Naked Gun isn’t that great. I think any film that dusts off the now ancient joke of lowering a Spirit Halloween sign on a place recently closed is content with somewhat limited ambitions.

Truly awful comedies tend to give you all of their best bits in trailers and clips, hoping that they can paper over deficiencies in hopes of a better-than-expected opening weekend. The OJ joke? It’s there*. The bit with the chili dogs? Check. I even tripped over a clip of an truly odd sequence where Frank Drebin Jr. (Neeson) is absolutely inconsolable after Beth (Anderson) accidentally re-connects his TiVo to the internet, thereby expiring a cache of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. I really would have like to come into that bit cold.

And yet, I kind of enjoyed it.

Maybe I was able to be aware that throughout the film I was laughing about as much as I did throughout any of the three Leslie Nielsen-starring original films. Judged by its own standards, this new Naked Gun doesn’t feel like an ill-considered notion, and it entertains plenty. That might have something to do with Neeson in the main role. Like the 1980s rehabilitation of Nielsen from respectable leading-man to the goofiest man who ever lived, bringing the late-stage Neeson action persona into a goofy comedy works. At some point, Ed Helms circled the leading role, and he would have been dreadful, coming originally from comedy as he did. One might yearn for a Jon Hamm, but we already know he’s funny. Let Neeson have his turn.

*Credit where credit is due that they didn’t keep going back to that well, and I might have forgiven them if they had.

Darkman (1990)

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, Larry Drake

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: On spec, the notion of Liam Neeson leading a Raimi-infused action steeped in the aesthetic of the classic Universal horror films would be at the top of my list of films to watch this year.

Releasing the movie in 1990 before Raimi had his solid run in the 1990s leading up to the breakthrough hit of Spider-Man (2002) and before Neeson had even been in Husbands and Wives (1992) to say nothing of Schindler’s List (1993)… It seems like a crazy idea, but I’m so glad it is there.

For me, this one gives Spider-Man 2 (2004) a run for its money as Raimi’s best work. Every manic impulse is on full display, and none of it has the self-conscious quality of some of his later work. Neeson, on the same front, is becoming the gruff, irate action hero we now know him to be, decades before anyone realized he had a particular set of skills.

Many of the great filmmakers have those films that never got made and we’re left wondering what could have been. Spielberg always wanted to make a Bond picture. Welles (and, for that matter, George Lucas) had his eyes set on some kind of adaptation of Heart of Darkness. James Cameron’s treatment of Spider-Man has always been the stuff of legend, snuffed out by protracted rights issues. Raimi has been on the record wanting at various points to do an adaptation of The Shadow. He didn’t get the go ahead in the 90s, and by the 2000s, he had indicated that he was never able to crack the story the way he wanted. By now, it may be too late. But at least we have this film. It may make us long for that lost film even more, but we are given a taste of what could have been.

The Dead Pool (1988)

Director: Buddy Van Horn

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey

Have I Seen it Before: Never. And now I’ve seen all of the Dirty Harry films.

Did I Like It: I’d been looking so forward to this one, given the absolutely bananas cast on display, all before they became anything that would be featured above the title. Carrey is here before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) made him a permanent light in the firmament, and even before Neeson because “that one guy in cool films who isn’t Bruce Campbell” in Darkman (1990). I honestly don’t think I’ve managed to overhype myself on a movie this much since The Flash (2023).

I was really wanting it to be bananas, all the while knowing that I was setting myself up for a goodly amount of disappointment. It never even occurred to me that Carrey is only here in the role of the guy that they find dead in the first few minutes of a Law & Order episode.

There’s probably a reason that both Neeson and Carrey had to wait for another couple of years before they could be considered stars, and it is probably the same reason that Eastwood swore off the prospect of another entry in the series*. This is not the triumphant conclusion one might think of. It’s not oddly funny like The Enforcer (1976), but it might be unreasonable to expect a part five of a series to reach up to the heights of previous entries. The real damning thing here is that Harry may simply not be the hero that the 80s need. Gone are the days where most Americans felt lost amidst a world that was growing too fast for them, and seemed like it had gone completely insane. That’s where Harry thrived: being grumpy but strangely fair among people he would never understand. Now he just seems grumpy.

*He could have gotten away with—and probably be forgiven for—making the main character of Gran Torino (2008) the Unforgiven (1992) for Callahan.

Batman Begins (2005)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, man. Summer of 2005. The eventual release of this film and the abatement of the era of Schumacher were the only things getting me out of bed in the morning.

Did I Like It: It’s a strange thing from some different angles, but this movie is often overshadowed by the juggernaut that was The Dark Knight (2008). In some ways, that’s fair, as Nolan so succeeded with this freshman effort that he was subsequently given the same freedom to flex his creative muscles in the sequel that Tim Burton was given in Batman Returns (1992) and Schumacher (I guess) got in Batman & Robin (1997).

And it’s fair primarily in the sense that this film is somewhat mired in very basic film writing tools. There’s a big set piece at the end, featuring the monorail built by the Wayne family and Wayne Tower that is seeded in the films early minutes. There are a few call backs to early sections of the film that feel a little jokey. The dialogue for Ra’s Al Ghul (Neeson) that is far too on-the-nose villain speak. And there’s a moment that causes regular audiences—and even myself—enjoy, but in the verisimilitude Nolan is going out of his way to try to achieve, doesn’t make any sense. Why does Batman (Bale) use his first appearance to say “I’m Batman” when that seems like something that the media would attach to him after he begins to terrorize the underworld? Even the Zack Snyder films—a complete drag as they mostly are—manage to give the Dark Knight more of an urban legend quality. It is one of the few things that those films got right.

There’s also that sense, and I think it mainly comes from the Star Trek series, that if the second film in the series is the absolute best-case scenario for a film series, then it must be because there is something wrong with the first film. This really isn’t case, other than those nitpicks I indicated above. The film is interested in character development (even if some of the characters drift into archetypes, see above) and moving those characters forward. The toys, to borrow a term from Jack Nicholson, Batman uses are given origins that may not be realistic, but have a certain James Bondian logic.

The film would have scratched all of my various bat-itches by the end, and then there’s that final scene. I remember in the theater when Gordon (Oldman) turns over that playing card, I had an expression of pure joy. He was out there. And at that moment, he was all potential. The imagination tingled. It’s a great way to leave a film. Even now, when the rise of the Clown Prince of Crime in this series had been fully and delightfully realized (and had become the rallying cry of every idiot with a blu ray player until Joaquin Phoenix gave them something else to fixate on), it still sends a shiver down my spine.

It’s still a pretty great way to make a movie.

Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd

Have I Seen It Before?: I mean, c’mon. I was alive in May of 1999. How would’ve I managed to avoid it?

Did I like it?: When confronted with that question, all I can do is sigh.

As time has gone on, the prequels—and especially this film—have enjoyed a modicum of critical re-evaluation.

That kinder eye is, unfortunately, completely unearned. 

I could go through all of the things wrong with the movie. Every performance outside of Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor is leaden to the point of legally being classified as a sedative by the FDA. One might want to write off the performers as unequal to the task, although it feels like punching down to continue to dump on Jake Lloyd, to say nothing of the fact that the rest of the cast have done extraordinary work outside of the saga.

Time has somehow been less kind to the film. Expectation may have eroded away, but there is a reality that Lucas didn’t bargain for that cannot be overcome. If Lucas had known how then state-of-the-art CGI would fair over time, he may have waited even longer before embarking on the production of the prequels. Each CGI creation is fairly impressive in and of itself but loses any credibility as part of a real movie when it has to interact with real actors. It’s why Andy and the rest of the humans in the Toy Story films weren’t played by real humans. It wouldn’t have worked.

I could also drag the plotline for being unfocused at best, and willfully uninteresting at worst. However, try tearing away the C-SPAN in space and the half-baked children’s story about a vacant-eyed boy meeting a racist’s idea of a salamander. The Kurosawa for the 21st century, Space Samurai epic is a pretty watchable movie. Too bad that only accounts for—at best a third of the film. Sometime in the last year, I saw a section of the film with all color removed, and played with the Japanese dub. Someone really should put the whole film through that process. I’d watch it. I suppose it really wouldn’t take that much work to do that, but who really wants to spend any more time thinking about Episode I than they really have to?

There is one thing you can’t take away from this film. For better or worse, it is a George Lucas film. Completely unmoored from the restrictions of budget, the need to collaborate, or the question of success, he was allowed to make a film uniquely his own. Not since Welles was given carte blanche over RKO has someone singularly willed a major motion picture into existence. Take that, those that question the auteur theory!

Men in Black International (2019)

Director: F. Gary Gray

Cast: Tessa Thompson, Chris Hemsworth, Kumail Nanjiani, Liam Neeson

Have I Seen it Before: While a new release, everything about this movie has been seen before.

Did I Like It: Not really, no.

And that’s okay. The movie’s heart is in the right place. Moving away from an American-centric version of the franchise both adds some flavor to the movie (and, cynically, increases its odds at a higher international box office). Making our protagonists a woman of color is a great choice, and Tessa Thompson continues her streak of being great, even if this movie isn’t doing her any favors.

And the fact that the movie surrounding her isn’t very good is kind of comforting. For years, any movie that has dared for any degree of increased representation was required to be good, or it would have been used as evidence that representation itself is flawed. That this movie underwhelms is not being used as evidence that films should continue to be as white and male as they possible can be.

I just wish it was funnier, you know? Chris Hemsworth has proven in recent years (especially when paired with the perfect comic partner like Tessa Thompson) to be the goofball the world needs right now, but here he is straightjacketed into a role not far removed from a warmed-over Han Solo. The plot is predictable to the point of being paint-by-numbers, and that has been forgiven in plenty of films, as long as it had been funnier.

Then again, the original three Will Smith starring films are only intermittently funny, so I suppose this movie lives up to its heritage. Maybe it just needed to come from stronger stock.

But, honestly? The fact that you enter the London MiB field office through an antique typewriter shop nearly flipped my review to be positive. So, it’s not completely without charm.