Well, that's a tough act for this year's Naked Gun reboot to follow, I suppose. But I'm not holding any hard feelings against it. Liam Neeson turns out to have the chops to pull off the deadpan comedy act, loaded with sight gags and ridiculous non sequiturs and a paradoxically mature-yet-immature brand of humor. Pamela Anderson seems to have it, too. And although the villain's nefarious plan is perhaps a bit too derivative (I also saw Kingsman, you know), it's all in the execution. And like all the best executions do, this one kills.
Frank Drebbin Jr., played by Neeson as the son of Nielsen's character (who makes a cameo appearance as, um, an owl), is an ethically challenged representative of Police Squad. Pulled off a bank robbery case because of his slapstick brutality, he finds himself on crash detail ... only to recognize that the victim of a fatal crash is connected with the heist. And the link between them is a tech mogul who plans to unleash The Purge on mankind, in order to cash in on the ruins. Anderson plays the crash victim's sister, who is equally determined to solve the guy's murder and who, by the way, is a mean scatter. By "scatter," I mean that jazzy gibberish that Mel Tormé specialized in. By "mean" I mean bloodcurdling. It's one (1) of the Three Scenes That Made It For Me, of which the other two (since I mention them) are (2) the romantic montage involving a psychotic snowman animated by black magic, and (3) when the villain (played by Danny Huston of Yellowstone) goes "Ow" after taking the first punch in his climactic fistfight with Neeson.
There, I haven't given away too many of the gags. Go and fall out of your seat with laughter, and my blessing.
No comments:
Post a Comment