Netflix And Chill: Cold Pursuit (2019)

It's no surprise to see a film in which Liam Neeson plays someone carving a path of vengeance through the criminal underworld, which is an easy way to summarise the plot of Cold Pursuit, but it's a bit more surprising to see the whole thing played out as a very dark comedy, with Neeson not an unflappable hero looking to showcase a particular set of skills. Remaking his own film, In Order Of Disappearance (written by Kim Fupz Aakeson), director Hans Petter Moland makes good use of his leading man, and seems to enjoy working with a cast of familiar faces who are all ready to be killed off and moved offscreen at any moment.

Neeson plays Nels Coxman, a dependable and quiet family man who has served his local community well for many years in his role as a snowplough driver. His life is upended, however, when his son is found dead, and the cause of death is marked as a heroin overdose. Nels knows that his son was no drug addict, but he doesn't know exactly what circumstances led to his death. Contemplating his own death, things change for Nels when he receives a vital piece of information that leads him from one criminal figure to another, creating a chain of connections that may take him all the way to a confrontation with Trevor 'Viking' Calcote (Tom Bateman).

Although this is another film that comes in at just under two hours (the days of a brisk 90-minute runtime for action movies and/or thrillers seem to be far behind us), Cold Pursuit does a good job of plotting things in a way that remains just about believable, up until the very end, and with time and space to give every character just enough flesh on their bones to make them more than just one of many disposable henchmen, which they could easily have been. Writer Frank Baldwin seems to do a decent job of transposing the action from snowy Norway to a snowy area of Colorado (although I should note that I haven't seen the original movie, which stars Stellan Skarsgård in the main role), and there are plenty of little moments that highlight the vein of comedy running throughout the violence and darkness.

Neeson is very good in the lead role, effectively reworking his typical performance with a hint of uncertainty and a need for good luck being on his side, and he embodies an unstoppable force, even if he's a blundering one, on the way to an unmovable object. Bateman is a lot of fun as the big baddie, ultimately undone by his inability to control the situation without escalating things, which puts his young son (Ryan, played by Nicholas Holmes) in danger, leads to a good number of "staff reductions", and puts him in an unnecessary war with a gang of Native American criminals headed up by White Bull (Tom Jackson, also very good, but much more subdued than everyone around him). Domenick Lombardozzi, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Gus Halper, David O'Hara, and a number of others have fun portraying dangerous men with a variety of amusing nicknames, and there's also room for welcome supporting turns from Laura Dern (Grace Coxman, a woman who ends up grieving without her husband to help her through the process), Julia Jones, William Forsythe, Emmy Rossum, and a few other familiar faces.

I had heard bad things about this when it was first released, which may have been a majority opinion from people already familiar with the original film (and it doesn't feel like a film that NEEDED a remake, other than to cater to the "I don't read movies" crowd), but I had a good time with it. The humour worked, the cast were all generally great (Bateman feels slightly miscast, but his character is so much fun that he still works well enough), and things knit together in a way that feels both satisfying and slightly messy.

7/10

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