The first full trailer for Paramount Pictures’ reboot of The Naked Gun has arrived, showing off the film’s combination of the type of classic schtick that made up the backbone of the original films with a hilariously brutal streak informed by star Liam Neeson’s own string of revenge movies.
Other modern cop dramas are also skewered in the trailer, including a disgusting and violent scene inspired by POV cop movie End of Watch in which Neeson’s Frank Drebin, Jr. desperately seeks a bathroom after binging too many hot dogs.
Here’s the trailer:
The whole conceit of the reboot hinges on the fact that Liam Neeson’s name bears a passing similarity to that of Leslie Nielsen, the star of the original Naked Gun series, with Neeson becoming a cop to follow in his dad’s footsteps (along with basically every other guy on the force).
The character of Frank Drebin originally debuted in the short-lived TV show Police Squad where he was played by Nielsen. The show then spun off into 1988’s film Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad along with a pair of sequels in 1991’s Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear, and 1994’s Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Final Insult.
The trailer looks a little more nuanced than the initial teaser, which showed only the broadest bits of an already incredibly broad comedy. Here, we get to see more of a modern edge to the new film, which takes on the tropes of current action movies as much as the gag-a-minute humor of the classic Naked Gun series.
The Naked Gun hits theaters August 1 with a cast that also includes Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, rapper Busta Rhymes, and WWE superstar Cody Rhodes, among others.
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