Liam Neeson makes certainty sound reassuring when it ought to worry us. We rate the conviction he brings to drama and the seriousness he brings to farce; too many routine thrillers have settled for the threatening voice.
Fi1m perspective
In The Naked Gun (2025), Liam Neeson delivers nonsense with the growl and steady stare of a man assessing a threat. His Frank Drebin Jr. never asks us to notice how funny he is being. That restraint is why Akiva Schaffer’s revival works as often as it does. This detective looks quite capable of causing the trouble himself.
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) established him as a dramatic leading man, before Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996) put his persuasive confidence at the centre. Jordan gives him room to make certainty sound useful to the people around him. We were stirred by his bluster in Michael Collins, because he made certainty sound reassuring even with violence in prospect. That is also where the film needs more resistance: Jordan is too fond of his subject to question him sufficiently. Elliot Goldenthal’s emphatic score presses for sympathy when Neeson has already done enough.
Supporting roles in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) and Batman Begins (2005) came before Taken (2008) made him an action star. His gravelly voice and habit of assessing a situation before acting suited that turn. The limitation is repetition: too many of the subsequent thrillers have treated those qualities as sufficient. His physical commitment is worth respecting, but another methodical, vengeful man gives us less reason to pay attention.
Schaffer finds something else to do with the same tools in The Naked Gun. Brandon Trost shoots its steel, streetlight and shadow as a serious thriller, while Bill Brzeski’s ordinary-looking precinct offices give the background jokes somewhere to happen. Neeson belongs in those surroundings, which makes the nonsense easier to accept. Pamela Anderson’s equally straight-faced Beth Davenport is a useful partner; he does not have to carry the comedy alone.
The revival does run short of good jokes late on, and Neeson’s refusal to wink cannot supply missing punchlines. Still, comedy gives that familiar stare a fresh purpose without requiring him to abandon what he does well. Before handing him another telephone and a threat, give him more nonsense to say.
Biography
Liam Neeson is a Northern Irish actor. Born William John Neeson on 7 June 1952 in Ballymena, County Antrim, he studied at Queen's University Belfast before training at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He made his screen debut in the late 1970s and gained early film roles in the 1980s.
He is known for Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List (1993), Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) and its sequels, Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins (2005), and Bryan Mills in Taken (2008). He played Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun (2025). Neeson received Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Schindler's List and has appeared in many other films and voice roles.
