The Naked Gun (2025) Review: Truth Bombs in Slapstick Packaging?

 

Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun reboot/sequel lands as a riotous, proudly stupid return to the ZAZ-style absurdity of the Leslie Nielsen originals. Liam Neeson steps into the late Nielsen’s shoes as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the deadpan, catastrophe-prone son of the legend, trying to save Police Squad from closure while stumbling through bank heists, femme fatales, and a tech billionaire’s apocalyptic scheme. Pamela Anderson shines as Beth Davenport, Paul Walter Hauser brings solid support as Ed Hocken Jr., and Danny Huston chews scenery as the villainous Richard Cane. If you’re here for wall-to-wall gags, sight gags, crude innuendo, and Neeson delivering lines with gravelly gravitas while dressed as a schoolgirl or fighting a jealous snowman, the movie delivers. It’s funny, often laugh-out-loud so, and refreshingly unpretentious in a era of overly serious blockbusters. The plot is mostly an excuse for mayhem — they even name a key MacGuffin the “P.L.O.T. Device” — but it holds together better than expected for this kind of farce.

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The Conspiracy Angle: Elite Chaos, Depopulation, and Ruling the Ashes

The film’s villain, Richard Cane — a tech mogul behind electric/driverless cars and flashy expos — isn’t subtle. He plans to deploy the P.L.O.T. Device (transmitted via smartphones) to turn ordinary people into raging, violent lunatics. The goal? Trigger widespread chaos and societal collapse, culling the population so that he and a select group of fellow elites can emerge from bunkers to “restart civilization” on their terms. This is exactly the kind of right-wing conspiracy narrative you hear in certain corners of the internet: globalist elites (often tech billionaires) engineering division, societal breakdown, and depopulation — whether through engineered crises, mind-control tech, pandemics, or cultural warfare — to consolidate power over a diminished, controllable remnant. Phones turning people into angry mobs? It’s hard not to see the jab at social media-fueled polarization. A billionaire explicitly wanting to reduce the herd for a post-apocalyptic reset? That’s “Great Reset” / “You’ll own nothing and be happy” territory with extra slapstick. Is a lot of truth said in jest here? On one level, yes — comedy has always been a vehicle for uncomfortable observations. The originals skewered police work, media, and authority with deadpan absurdity. This one updates it for the smartphone/social media age. The villain’s plan plays like a heightened parody of real-world critiques: tech overlords shaping behavior through algorithms, fostering outrage for engagement (and profit/control), and broader elite hubris about “saving the planet” by managing humanity. The film doesn’t preach; it mocks the absurdity of it all while letting the conspiracy play out as the straight-faced villain motivation. Frank Drebin bumbles his way to stopping it, which undercuts any heavy messaging — it’s ultimately silly fun, not a manifesto. That said, calling it a deliberate “hint” at right-wing conspiracies overstates things. It’s broader satire: cop movies, action tropes, billionaire villains (a staple of Bond and superhero flicks forever), and modern anxieties about technology and division. The screenwriters likely saw it as timely absurdity rather than coded endorsement. Still, the resonance is there. In a time of declining trust in institutions, visible elite coordination on global issues, and obvious social media manipulation, audiences can read it as “they’re not even hiding it anymore” — even if the filmmakers mainly wanted cheap laughs.

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Final Verdict

The Naked Gun (2025) earns its laughs and then some. It’s not high art or sharp political satire, but it’s one of the more purely entertaining big-screen comedies in recent memory. The conspiracy plot gives it a surprising backbone and invites exactly the kind of “truth in jest” discussion. Whether you see it as harmless parody or a winking nod to deeper concerns about elite overreach and manufactured chaos, it works because it commits fully to the bit without winking too hard at the audience.

Recommended for fans of the originals, Neeson’s unexpected comic timing, and anyone who needs a break from grimdark cinema. Just don’t overthink the P.L.O.T. Device — or do. That’s the fun of it. Go see it, laugh hard, and debate the subtext over drinks afterward. Justice (and absurdity) has a new daddy.