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Cold Pursuit
Starring: Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Genre: Action
Rating: PG-15+
RUNTIME: 118 Mins
Like a fine wine, Liam Neeson is getting better with age. He’s played a variety of roles in the past, all the way from Jedi Master through to concentration camp detainee-liberating factory owner, but it wasn’t until 2008’s Taken that he solidified his reputation as a bonafide badass.
Following Taken, Neeson appeared in film after film as a put-upon dad or aging veteran destroying henchmen and vengefully murdering the wicked.
Although currently embattled in a racism row, he might have missed out of a red carpet opening but the actor remains one of my favourites and a trip to the cinema to catch his latest release was always going to be a must.
There’s no cold shoulder from me.
At first glance, Hans Petter Moland’s Cold Pursuit – a remake of his own 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance – appears to be yet another rollicking and shallow Neeson revenge thriller.
The plot certainly apes familiar talking points; when Nels Coxman’s son is killed by a vengeful drug dealer, Coxman, a regular citizen who drives the snowplough in his tiny Colorado ski resort township, begins stalking and killing the men responsible. Luckily for Coxman, the drug dealers are sloppy enough that they can easily be located and murdered by a sexagenarian snowplough driver.
But after the first few murders (and Coxman is aggressively methodical), Cold Pursuit slows down, mellows, scatters its focus and becomes something far more interesting than a typical knockoff. Coxman’s role is eventually reduced to that of a supporting player in a larger gang war between the fast-talking city gangster Viking (Tom Bateman) and the local Ute tribe led by White Bull (Tom Jackson).
Additionally, we spend a lot of time with a local cop (Emmy Rossum), Coxman’s ailing older brother Wingman (William Forsythe), an assassin named Eskimo (Arnold Pinnock) and a host of other criminals and scumbags, each with a nickname more amusing than the last. Laura Dern is mixed in as well, but she has maybe three scenes as Nels’ wife before vanishing entirely.
Coxman’s quest for vengeance will indeed draw to a close, but because of Moland’s mature insistence on taking long, long plot rest stops, Cold Pursuit quickly becomes a languid, exhausted and contemplative character study.
It focuses on the human cost of Coxman’s quest, and, by extension, most vengeance-based action films. When Cold Pursuit dispenses of one of its many creeps, it laments the loss of each one sacrificed on the altar of familiar genre grind. Each time a character dies, their death is accompanied by a brief memorial card, honouring their passing. The world of action thrillers, Cold Pursuit argues, can be just as sad as it is exciting.
That’s not to say that Cold Pursuit doesn’t also possess a wicked sense of humour. The over-the-top characters, and Coxman’s shocking ease of blood vengeance, are both sources of dark, sardonic laughter. There is a great deal of quirk at play here, a quality perhaps more openly enjoyed by those who grew up in the pulp-orientated films of the Nineties.
Action aficionados may be frustrated by Cold Pursuit, especially after the action-packed first act, because those first few kills are undeniably awesome. But this is not a Taken-like shoot-’em-up. It’s a weary contemplation of old men and their waning roles in criminal spheres.
With Cold Pursuit, Moland, and perhaps Neeson as well, appear to be closing the book on a certain type of revenge thriller that has been Neeson’s stock in trade for the last 11 years. We’ve had a lot of fun, but Cold Pursuit argues that it’s OK to mourn the passing of a genre now.
Ultimately, Cold Pursuit is partly a great action thriller, and Liam Neeson is still kicking plenty of butt, but the film is mostly an intriguing, relaxing, totally tuckered-out character study of old men running out of the energy required to run a criminal enterprise. As thrillers go, this one is more adult than your average.
Now showing in: Cinepolis Atrium Mall Saar, Cineco, Novo, Mukta and VOX.
Kristian’s verdict: 4/5
