From master actor to master spoof: why Liam Neeson is box office gold

Liam Neeson may have gained pop-culture immortality for his gravelly growl of a certain line of dialogue in the 2008 hostage thriller Taken - "I don't have money, but what I do have is a very particular set of skills" - but the release of his new film, a reboot of the spoof cop movie The Naked Gun, is another remarkable turn in his distinguished career.

- Andrew Pulver

So far the actor has appeared in heavyweight prestige dramas, historical biopics, blockbusting science fiction, superhero epics, touching romcoms and head-cracking action cinema. But in The Naked Gun, Neeson has, for the first time, taken the lead role in an out-and-out comedy.

He plays Frank Drebin Jr, the police-detective son of Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin in the original. Created by the celebrated comedy team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, The Naked Gun was released in 1988, with Nielsen also in two sequels, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear from 1991 and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult in 1994, as well as the preceding TV series Police Squad!, which aired in 1982.

Neeson's intense, unflappable acting style has been acclaimed by critics as a perfect match for Nielsen's stoneface delivery. The Guardian's chief film critic, Peter Bradshaw, said Neeson "deadpans it impeccably", while the Telegraph's Robbie Collin wrote that he "delivers his dialogue with a gravelly matter-of-factness that only compounds its lunacy".