This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Holster That Stripped Weapon
Plot Overview
In this
reboot of the 1982 TV series “Police Squad” and its
three following movies (1988 to 1994) called “The Naked
Gun,” Det. Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) uses a non-threatening
disguise to infiltrate a bank heist in progress and shoot it out
with the robbers. Chief Davis (CCH Pounder) not liking the
department being sued over it reassigns Drebin to Collisions. His
first case is a suicide by vehicle, but the dead guy's sister Beth
Davenport (Pamela Anderson) suspects foul play. She teams up with
Drebin to get to the bottom of it. This case and the bank job turn
out to be related. They proceed to crack them by recovering a high
tech plot device purloined from the bank vault.
The body cam that Drebin was required to wear showed a lot of pedestrian collisions while he was distracted letting his assigned auto car drive itself. The technology supposedly makes it as safe as or safer than a human driver, but one along the lines of author Patrick Ness: “the car that had run the red light and knocked into Roy and the bike and him [had] been driven by an eighty-three-year-old lady who could barely see over the steering wheel” (35). The lady was too ancient and the technology too new.
Ideology
TNG is a rudimentary illustration of the
Christian Gospel. A bank job targeted a sole safety deposit box
just as a single tree in the Garden of Eden was prohibited, the
eating from which caused mankind a whole world or sorrow. The
Virgin Mary birthed a savior and an innocent lollipop girl hatched
a cop to save the day. The former was crucified to redeem man and
the latter hanged upside down over the New Year's balls to retrieve
the plot device to set the world right.
A black bank robber (Busta Rhymes) was questioned who denied even being there though they had video recording of him. He was both there & not there. The fall in the garden implicates the whole human race though there's no mention of Negroes there in the Bible account. That comes later. Drebin arriving for work is asked, “Drunk?” to which he replies, “No, just getting started.” Noah's flood provided a new start. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Germane to modern times is the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62).
In Noah's story a
deal-breaker occurred when Noah's youngest son Ham (Gen. 9:18-19) saw a dishabille Noah
(Gen. 9:20-22) and then told his
brothers Shem and Japheth how he'd (Ezek. 22:10) “discovered their
father's nakedness.” His brothers respected Noah's privacy
(Gen. 9:23) and so received
(Gen. 9:24-27) the expected
blessing while Ham's lineage—there represented by his youngest son
Canaan—were given an inferior status. In TNG a pants-deprived cop has his waist area blurred for
modesty sake, but the moon shot is left untouched.
Ham had put himself in jeopardy
according to, (Prov. 30:17)
“The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey
his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the
young eagles shall eat it.” Especially pertinent in this case
is Noah's control over the animals including the raven (Gen. 8:7.) Noah, however, intervened to cheat
death.
There's a parity of eye loss and servitude given in (Exodus 21:26) “And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” Ham and his line—represented by Canaan in his lineage—could be given servitude rather than mutilation. (Gen. 9:24-27) “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”
Ham's youngest son Canaan is the particularly noted recipient of the malediction. Later when the Israelis invaded the promised land, the Canaanites were due for destruction, but the Gibeonite branch (the Hivites of Joshua 11:19 & Gen. 10:15-17) did a deal with Joshua who was the Jewish leader. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and persuaded Joshua to make a league with this “distant” tribe. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them, (Joshua 9:24-27) he made them bondmen, which was more to their liking.
A redirection of purpose is reflected by Robert H. Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah who writes:
[Researchers] Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer … quote Charles Murray: “There's hardly a single outcome—black voting rights, access to public accommodation, employment, particularly in white collar jobs—that couldn't have been predicted on the basis of pre-1964 trend lines.” “That's pretty devastating,” the authors say. “It suggests that we have spent trillions of dollars to create an outcome that would have happened even if the government had done nothing.” (238)
Liberator Lincoln never belonged to
any church, and the locals considered him a pagan with an
idolatrous regard for consent of the people. Southerners may be
more sympathetic than the Yanks to the above Bible passages. I
heard a story on the radio: Seems the Dakota Indians were
conducting raids, and the army suggested some of them be hanged as
an example. They brought Lincoln a list of three hundred some
candidates. That was too many so he whittled it down to thirty
eight. They built the gallows and invited the Indians to come see
something they wanted to show them.
There was a big gathering for the unveiling of
“something.” They called out the thirty-eight names and because
of difficulty in pronunciation, some mistakenly thought they heard their
own names called and raised their hands saying,, “That's me.”
Thirty-eight were hanged simultaneously that day including three
spectators.
Well, Lincoln was big on consent, and they did raise their hands. Somehow we've inherited his legacy in public policy. When in the movie Drebin and his partner and a host of other cops paid homage to their predecessors' pictures on the wall, a black cop demurred. Not his style.
Instead we have a black female chief of police. Her black husband Ronald just lies in bed awaiting his promotion. According to respected scholar Gilder,
Who would have anticipated that it would be liberal Republicans in the Nixon Administration who would fulfill the cynical dream of Judge Smith when he added the words “or sex” to the bitterly won civil rights laws of the sixties. Smith thought that the thicket of sex discrimination would ultimately confound and discredit all the antidiscrimination efforts of government—in fact all the highest egalitarian impulses of liberalism. And he may have been right. (96)
We're in an age of affirmative action, and this movie highlights the irony. The blacks are into black history, just not the first chapter.
Production Values
"" was directed by Akiva Schaffer. It was written by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand and Akiva Schaffer. It stars Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser. They all did well; I'm just used to seeing the lead in a different role. Anderson is deadpan pitch perfect.
MPA rated it PG–13 for crude slash sexual material,
violence slash bloody images and brief partial nudity. This one
continued in the vein of its predecessors but with a new cast who
did their best. The nightclub scene was atmospheric. The
cops guzzled coffee. Wait for the after-credits scene(s.) Runtime
is 1 hour 25 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
It had an unusual crucified Christ redemption motif with an overall silly backdrop, kind of like a goofball Sunday School.
I thought the au courant humor was still amusing though not as novel as it once was. You probably already know what you'll be getting.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Multiple suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture was cited from the King James Version, Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, Print.
Bork, Robert H. Slouching Towards Gomorrah. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Print.
Brimelow, Peter and Leslie Spencer. “When quotas replace merit, everybody suffers,” Forbes, February 15, 1993, p. 102. As quoted in Bork.
Drunken Noah scene rendered in a Civil War vintage woodcut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877. Image by licensor iStock.com/Getty Images, used under license.
Gilder, George F. Sexual Suicide. New York: Quadrangle, 1973. Print.
Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.
Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.
Ness, Patrick. The Crane Wife. Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Ness. New York: Penguin Books, 2014. Print.
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