Cold Pursuit (Review)
Cold Pursuit is Not What You’d Expect and that’s a Good Thing.
From the get-go, there seem to be a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t enjoy Cold Pursuit. From it’s geri-action premise to the fact that it’s yet another American remake of a foreign film to star Liam Neeson’s recent real-life WTF moment. There are a lot of hurdles it had to clear in order to even start to please me. So, with that in mind, I have to make it perfectly clear just how impressive it is that I actually enjoyed Cold Pursuit so damn much. Sure, it’s a cliched revenge thriller featuring an old man getting vengeance for the wrongful death of his son, but it’s so damn well executed that it manages to become much more than just the sum of its parts.
Neeson recently revitalized his career by cornering the market when it comes to movies about old guys beating up men half their age every year. Last year he starred in The Commuter so it’s not unreasonable to think that this is just going to be another one of “those movies.” However, Cold Pursuit seems to be in on just how absurd it’s premise is. After all, the hero is a family man who drives a snowplow for a living. So the idea of him dismantling a drug ring filled with hardened criminals with nicknames like Speedo, Viking, and… Santa (?) is a little implausible. Because of that, it strips Neeson of the killer edge that we’ve seen all too often in his recent roles and adopts a more bumbling approach to its hero. Don’t get me wrong, Cold Pursuit is still a brutal and violent film, but it cuts the blood and gore with moments of genuine comedy thanks to some truly quirky performances.
Cold Pursuit is actually a remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (or Kraftidioten if you want to try pronouncing that). Now, I get that there’s a lot of remake hate out there, but before you start lighting up your torches and sharpening your pitchforks, I should mention that the original film’s director, Hans Petter Moland, returned to tackle this Americanized version with a new script by Frank Baldwin. I’ve seen both versions of the movie and I can honestly say that I prefer this new one. The core concepts that worked so well in the original are all here alive and well, but the humor and action sequences have all been taken to the next level. Neeson’s character wants to get revenge for the death of his son, but hardly has the skill set to “John Wick” his way through them. Because of this, his method of vengeance is essentially based off of stuff he “read in a crime novel” with hilarious results, such as having to attempt multiple times to choke a man to death (because this stuff is harder than it looks). This almost effortless sense of humor is what saves Cold Pursuit from itself and makes it so satisfying to watch.
The violence in the film might not be over the top and “cool,” but it’s incredibly hard to watch because of just how brutally realistic it is. There are no one punch knockouts in it, but plenty of people lose teeth after taking blows to the face and there is a lot of blood when things start to get heated. None of this feels gratuitous though, because Moland doesn’t dwell on the violence of the film. Instead, he focuses on the quirky characters that make up the core of the story. Neeson, for example, is an extreme stoic to the point where he doesn’t even “burden” people with a personality. This is offset by the fact that all the other characters have such unique and memorable personas. Take the main antagonist “Viking” (Tom Bateman), who slings cocaine for a living but preaches about the fact that things like “baking soda” and “high fructose corn syrup” is basically poison. In fact, all the baddies in this film prove so much more interesting than Neeson’s hero, but it’s these sorts of unexpected minor twists that make Cold Pursuit so good.
As funny and gruesome as Cold Pursuit is, it’s also a beautiful movie in a lot of ways. As I mentioned, Neeson plays a stoic character in it, never showing much emotion even after the death of his son. This is reflected in the snow-caked mountainous landscape of “Colorado” in which the movie takes place. It’s a cold and lonely landscape reminiscent of the one I enjoyed so much in 2017’s Wind River, and it’s captured beautifully once again in Cold Pursuit. Because of this, the very world that this tale takes place on takes on a life of its own. As absurd as so much of this movie is, there’s a sense that something like this could take place in such an isolated part of the world and no one would ever be the wiser. That adds just enough realism for the audience to keep an open mind and accept this film in all its glory.
Cold Pursuit is much more than I could have possibly hoped for. It’s a fun and quirky film that breathes new life into the tired tropes we see so often in modern action movies. It’s a far cry from what I was expecting when I sat down and has been one of the more pleasant surprises I’ve stumbled across in theaters in 2019. Be warned though that means that this probably isn’t the movie you think it’s going to be. However, because of that, it’s a movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend because there’s nothing quite like it in theaters right now.
