One death begets many more in the cold snow.
What They Say:
Cold Pursuit, an action thriller infused with irreverent humor, stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a family man whose quiet life with his wife (Laura Dern) is upended following the mysterious death of their son.
Nels’ search for justice turns into a vengeful hunt for Viking (Tom Bateman), a drug lord he believes is connected to the death. As one by one each of Viking’s associates “disappear,” Nels goes from upstanding citizen to ice-cold vigilante, letting nothing – and no one – get in his way.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Directed by Hans Petter Moland in his Hollywood debut, Cold Pursuit is a remake of his 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance. This film landed in early 2019 from Lionsgate and on its $60 million budget, it did a worldwide of $76 million. One of the things that caught my eye with it initially was that the trailer was done with a solid dark humor tinge to it that really sold it, an element that doesn’t make it into the film itself really. The other was that I’m a huge fan of the Scandinoir genre and this had a lot of elements that were right up my ally. It didn’t hurt that it looked like a good bit of fun with Liam Neeson in the lead doing his thing of killing as many people as he could with his particular style. He’s trod this road many a time but I’ll admit that it still works for me when done right like this.
The film has a lot of characters and several subplots that could be their own movies and it digs into a pretty good past that you could easily see this going the Fargo route of being expanded out from a film to a season show. Taking place largely in the ski resort town of Kehoe, Colorado, the place has one main road to the main world that Nels Coxman takes care of as part of his Open Road company. This is the place where when plowed you have the ten-plus foot high barriers around the road, making it almost like a tunnel to drive through. Nels, just award the Citizen of the Year award for keeping the town accessible for its rich business, is just about to suffer a real loss when his son is mistaken as part of a plan to skim some criminals of their cocaine shipments. He wasn’t involved but was believed to be the one doing it, resulting in his death.
Circumstances don’t take long for him to discover the truth – just as he’s ready to commit suicide himself over the loss of his son – and that sets him off to go up the chain of all those involved, from those that were hands-on in the death to those they work for. The top of the chain is a real nutso named Viking (Tom Bateman) who upon starting to see some of his men end up dead from that are beginning to think it’s the old Indian White Bull reneging on the deal his father made with him decades ago. And that sets into motion a turf war that Nels operates within as he takes down more of Viking’s men, looks to hire an assassin to take out Viking, and more. The sprawling nature of some of the subplots comes from the turf war aspect as it’s revealed but we also get a nod to one of Viking’s men being in a relationship with another of his guys that ends up causing trouble, we get a local cop on the take and a recent arrival looking to make a name for herself. Past dealings come to light and in the midst of it all is just Nels looking for simple revenge as he’s lost absolutely everything that matters to him.
One of the big draws of the film are the visuals because there’s a unique kind of tension that comes from it as you see these roads moved through, the heights of the mountains themselves, the blistering cold. All of it presents something very stark. When Nels disposes of bodies, he wraps them in chicken wire and tosses them over a river that feeds into a massive waterfall. And he does it because he read about it in a crime novel years ago as a way to keep bodies down for the fish to eat. Nels operates with a largely calm and collected approach, not overly verbose or emotional either, and just kind of going forward with his kills in between keeping the road open. Each little area feels like there’s so much to explore, from the quiet way his wife (Laura Dern) leaves early on to the dynamic between his brother Brock (William Forsyth) and his Vietnamese wife Ahn (Elizabeth Thai). Hell, most of the people working for Viking could have a pretty good story told. It’s creative in how it brings them down (I love the end credits going by order of disappearance, i.e. the title of the original film) and just the wave it weaves between all of these little stories that connect but could be even bigger.
In Summary:
While I had been looking forward to this prior to its release it took until nearly a year after before I was finally able to sit down – in the middle of winter – and check it out. It’s definitely one of those simple films that Neeson has taken on when it comes to revenge so there’s an easy familiarity about it to be sure. But that makes it pretty accessible while at the same time dropping in more than enough stuff that you could see just how big it could actually go, getting quite twisty. It’s a great looking film for the setting and visuals, the cast is straightforward in how they operate but there’s a good bit of fun about it, and I had an enjoyable evening taking it in and looking forward to revisiting it to look at some of the details more in the near future. It’s an easy bit of fluff in the end but one worth taking a look at.
Grade: B+
