The Naked Gun 2025 Is Back — And It Brought Infrared Goggles
Let’s be honest: when Paramount announced a Naked Gun reboot, the internet collectively held its breath. The original trilogy — anchored by the late, irreplaceable Leslie Nielsen as the magnificently clueless Detective Frank Drebin — is sacred comedy territory. Mess with it and fans will never forgive you. But director Akiva Schaffer (the genius behind Hot Rod and half of The Lonely Island) came in swinging, handing the badge to Liam Neeson as the new Frank Drebin Jr., and somehow — somehow — making it work.
The 2025 reboot is stuffed with callbacks, slapstick mayhem, and the kind of deadpan absurdist humor that made the original films legendary. But if you’ve seen the movie (or even just caught the buzz online), you already know there is one scene everybody is talking about. One scene that perfectly encapsulates everything glorious and unhinged about this franchise’s return. We’re talking, of course, about Sig’s infrared vision spy sequence — a moment so brilliantly stupid, so committed to the bit, that it earns a place in the comedy hall of fame right alongside the baseball game and the queen’s visit from the originals.
Strap in, because we’re diving deep into this gloriously absurd scene and why it works so well.
Who Is Sig, and Why Is Kevin Durand Perfect for the Role?
Before we break down the scene itself, let’s talk about Sig — the looming, scenery-devouring villain played by Kevin Durand. If you’re a fan of genre film and TV, you already know Durand is one of Hollywood’s great underutilized character actors. The man has been a terrifying presence in everything from Lost to Dark Angel to Prisoners, and he brought genuine menace to his role as Fisk’s enforcer in the Marvel universe. He is physically imposing, emotionally unpredictable on screen, and has an almost supernatural ability to make you simultaneously frightened and fascinated by a character.
So casting him as Sig — a villain who is deadly serious about absolutely ridiculous things — is a stroke of casting genius. Durand plays Sig with zero irony and total conviction, which is exactly the energy a Naked Gun villain needs. The joke is never that Sig is bumbling or incompetent. The joke is that he’s a genuinely threatening, highly capable operative who keeps getting entangled in increasingly absurd situations through no real fault of his own. That tension between his competence and the insane world around him is where all the comedy gold lives.
And nowhere is that funnier than in the infrared scene.
Breaking Down the Infrared Vision Scene: What Actually Happens
Here’s the setup: Sig needs intelligence on Frank Drebin Jr. and his growing relationship with Beth, played by the one and only Pamela Anderson in a role that’s equal parts loving self-parody and genuine comedic performance. Sig, being the kind of villain who takes his craft extremely seriously, deploys state-of-the-art surveillance technology — specifically, infrared thermal imaging — to spy on the pair.
What follows is a masterclass in escalating absurdity. The scene works on multiple layers:
- The technical commitment: Sig is shown using what appears to be genuinely sophisticated surveillance equipment, treating this operation with the gravity of a CIA extraction mission. The cinematography briefly mirrors a genuine spy thriller — tense, precise, professional.
- The thermal imaging visuals: When we cut to Sig’s point of view through the infrared lens, everything shifts to that classic heat-map palette — blobs of orange, yellow, and red that reduce human beings to glowing thermal silhouettes. It’s visually striking in a way that’s immediately recognizable to anyone who’s ever watched a military documentary or, you know, Predator.
- The punchline: What Sig actually sees — and what he’s forced to report back — is exactly as ridiculous as the Naked Gun brand demands. Without spoiling every beat for those who haven’t seen it, let’s just say that Frank’s legendary obliviousness reaches new heights, and Sig’s stone-faced professionalism crumbles in the most spectacular fashion.
The scene is a perfect loop: Sig is doing something objectively villainous (surveillance, invasion of privacy, corporate espionage or worse), and yet you can’t help but feel a little sorry for him. He signed up to be a dangerous operative. He did not sign up for this.
Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson: The Comedy Chemistry Nobody Saw Coming
A huge reason the infrared scene lands as hard as it does is the chemistry between Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. This is a pairing that sounds like a punchline on paper, and yet on screen it genuinely works — and that’s not nothing.
Neeson, God bless him, has been on a fascinating career arc. The man went from Oscar-nominated dramatic powerhouse to accidental action icon (the Taken franchise essentially invented a sub-genre), and now he’s leaning full-tilt into self-aware comedy. His Frank Drebin Jr. is a man completely unaware of how ridiculous he is, delivered with a straight face and a quiet dignity that Leslie Nielsen would absolutely recognize and approve of. Neeson doesn’t wink at the camera. He never lets you see him acknowledging the joke. He just is Frank, and it’s magnificent.
Anderson, meanwhile, is having what can only be described as an era of authentic reinvention. After The Last Showgirl reminded everyone she can genuinely act, and her appearance in this film leans into her cultural iconography in a way that feels empowering rather than exploitative. Beth is funny, warm, and occasionally the only sane person in any given room — which, in a Naked Gun movie, makes her the most dangerous character of all.
Together, Neeson and Anderson create a Frank-and-Jane dynamic that honors the original (where Nielsen and Priscilla Presley were genuinely sweet together) while being entirely their own thing. The infrared scene works because we’re invested in them as a comedic duo. Sig spying on them isn’t just a gag — it’s a gag with stakes, because we actually care how these two ridiculous people are getting along.
Why the Infrared Gag Belongs in the Naked Gun Hall of Fame
The Naked Gun series has a rich tradition of gags that seem simple on the surface but are actually architecturally sophisticated pieces of comedy construction. Think about the hospital scene in the original, or the opera sequence, or any of Frank’s oblivious walk-throughs of chaos he never notices. These jokes work because they’re built on a foundation of commitment — every person in the scene plays it straight, and the comedy emerges from the collision between normality and absurdity.
The infrared scene in the 2025 film belongs in that tradition for several reasons:
- It subverts spy movie conventions perfectly. Infrared surveillance is a trope we associate with serious, high-stakes espionage — Mission: Impossible, James Bond, military thrillers. Dropping it into a Naked Gun context is an instant genre collision that pays off immediately.
- Kevin Durand never breaks. His performance in this scene is a tightrope walk between genuine menace and dawning horror, and he never lets either fully take over. He stays in character as a professional operative even as things spiral. That restraint is what makes it funny.
- It respects the audience. The scene doesn’t over-explain its joke or linger past the punchline. Akiva Schaffer knows when to cut. That’s a rarer skill than it sounds.
- It connects to character. Sig’s humiliation in this scene feeds directly into his motivation for the rest of the film. Comedy and plot actually working together — imagine that.
Great comedy gags in franchise films don’t just make you laugh in the moment — they stick with you, get quoted, get replayed in your head on the drive home. This one does all of that.
Akiva Schaffer’s Vision: Honoring the Legacy Without Being Trapped by It
Credit where it’s due: Akiva Schaffer had an almost impossible task with this reboot. The Naked Gun films are beloved precisely because of Leslie Nielsen, whose comedy persona was so specific and so perfected that any attempt to replicate it would fail instantly. Schaffer wisely didn’t try to replicate it.
Instead, he built a film that operates on the same comedic principles as the originals — deadpan delivery, escalating absurdity, physical comedy that trusts the audience, jokes layered in the background for attentive viewers — while giving it a fresh cast and sensibility. The infrared scene is a perfect example of this philosophy. It could exist in the original trilogy (Frank Drebin being unknowingly surveilled while being completely oblivious is peak Naked Gun), but it’s executed in a way that feels contemporary rather than nostalgic.
Schaffer also clearly understands that the best comedy comes from specificity and commitment, not from referencing other jokes or winking at the camera. His cast is uniformly excellent at playing it straight, and that discipline is what elevates the material from “decent reboot” to something that might actually stand alongside the originals in the franchise canon.
Final Verdict: Go See This Scene — Go See This Movie
Look, The Naked Gun (2025) is not a perfect film. No comedy reboot of a beloved classic ever is, and anyone telling you otherwise is either lying or hasn’t seen the original trilogy recently. But it is a genuinely funny movie with moments of inspired absurdist brilliance, and Sig’s infrared vision sequence is the clearest example of the film operating at its absolute peak.
Kevin Durand is a revelation as a comedic villain. Liam Neeson has found a second act as a deadpan comedy legend. Pamela Anderson reminds us she’s always been in on the joke, and she’s very good at it. And Akiva Schaffer has made a Naked Gun movie that Frank Drebin himself — the original one — might have tipped his hat at.
The infrared scene alone is worth the price of admission. But stay for the rest of it too. You won’t regret it.
The Naked Gun (2025) is in theaters now. Go in with an open mind, leave your cynicism at the door, and for the love of all that is holy, do not stand near the stadium pyrotechnics.
