Movie Title: Cold Pursuit
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Writer: Frank Baldwin (based on the movie 'Kraftidioten' written by Kim Fupz Aakeson)
Starring: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Micheál Richardson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, John Doman, Arnold Pinnock, Domenick Lombardozzi, Michael Eklund, Julia Jones, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Bradley Stryker
Review: When his son is murdered, snowplow driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) hits the road to hunt down the drug lord and his associates that are responsible. Revenge is a dish best served cold! I think Mr. Freeze said that.
Cold Pursuit has quite a bit going for it: brutally bitter Liam Neeson, father on a revenge kick, horrible criminals, icy topography, the ultra-violence, a snowplow, the gorgeous Emmy Rossum, darkly comedic situations, William Forsythe rocking a sweet mustache - what more could you ask for? Well, this revenge flick is quite impressive, but it doesn't quite live up to expectations.
The ever-dependable, yet unfortunately typecast Liam Neeson is endlessly watchable. And as many of his "revenge" themed features have shown us, the man is tough, flawed, and unflappable. But what starts out as what we would expect in movie like this it kind of forgets about the lead character at a certain point and basically gets to bogged down with its own quirky storytelling.
The movie's tone shifts too much for me. It goes from a dower tale of a family that lost a son to a revenge flick to a battle between rival drug lords to Liam Neeson's snowplow driver dropping a tree through the roof of a man's car. Some scenes are darkly funny. Some scenes are played stone sober. Some scenes don't seem to make sense. Some sense are edited within the story so poorly that you get confused and distracted. Cold Pursuit is remake of a foreign film, Norway's In Order of Disappearance, so I'm wondering if there's something that got lost in translation or is it just sloppily put together or a filmmaker made a successful film and got overwhelmed with a remake with a big time star attached. Who knows?
I did enjoy Cold Pursuit for the most part. Neeson is great. Tom Bateman's "Viking" is a vile villain, and Emmy Rossum is wonderful as a cop that wants to bust some bad guys. This one will surely disappoint fans of Neeson's revenge movie streak, but I think it might surprise some fans of quirky crime capers.
The most enjoyable thing in the movie for me was the way that it informs you of a character's death. It was silly, cold and it made me chuckle. After all I do enjoy gallows humor.
Fun Fact: Liam Neeson has stated this will be his final action movie role.