Directed by Oslo-born filmmaker Hans Petter Moland, Cold Pursuit is a Hollywood remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (also directed by Moland), a revenge-fuelled actioner with a dark comedy twist. For this reimagining, they replaced veteran Stellan Skarsgård, who in Hollywood films plays a more scholarly type (see Good Will Hunting or the Thor films), with another actor in his mid-60s more acceptable to audiences as an action hero — so much so that he’s made the revenge subgenre his own, almost comically so — Liam Neeson.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen In Order of Disappearance, so I’m not sure how much Cold Pursuit was remoulded for Liam Neeson’s reputation. Despite being an accomplished actor with films such as Schindler’s List under his belt, of late the man has become so typecast in his “you went after my family, so now I’m going to leave 700 dead bodies in my wake” roles, that Cold Pursuit comes across as a Quentin Tarantino-esque spoof.

Now, don’t get too excited when I mention Tarantino, because Cold Pursuit isn’t that clever. And while incredibly violent, much of the brutality takes place off-screen. So, a diet Tarantino film, if you will, with just a hint of tone-deafness in its otherwise funny humour.

Despite black comedy adding quirk to its brutal action and lovely cinematography, Liam Neeson’s Cold Pursuit isn’t very clever

The film is set at a ski resort in the fictional Colorado town of Kehoe, where it is so cold and the walls of snow so high that only the White Walkers from Game of Thrones would want to vacation there. Here, Liam Neeson plays a snow-plow driver with perhaps the most masculine last name for an action hero of all time, Nelson “Nels” Coxman.

Coxman and his wife Grace (Laura Dern) live the quiet life. And recently, Nels was awarded “Citizen of the Year” for his relentless devotion to his vocation. Their bliss is cut short when their son Kyle (played by Liam Neeson’s actual son Michael Richardson), who worked as a baggage handler, is found dead. To add to their shock, they are told he died of a drug overdose. The stress is too much for the couple, and it breaks them up.

Here, Coxman takes a page out of a thriller he read, and starts killing members of the gang and disposing of their bodies by sinking them in the river.

Coxman is near the edge when he learns more about Michael’s death. It turns out that he was murdered by a drug cartel that clearly didn’t realise their target’s father was Liam Neeson. Here, Coxman takes a page out of a thriller he read, and starts killing members of the gang and disposing of their bodies by sinking them in the river. Soon, their leader Trevor “Viking” Calcote, played by Tom Bateman — in a weirdly overacted performance — begins to suspect a rival Native American gang, and goes after them. At this stage, Cold Pursuit spends a surprising amount of time away from its charismatic star, though the film holds its own thanks to its quirkiness.

The black comedy eventually runs out of ammunition, but along with the action and the lovely cinematography in British Columbia, Canada, enough of the absurdity hits the target to make Cold Pursuit worth the watch. Still though, a decade from now, the film would have been all but forgotten had Liam Neeson not made the most ill-advised admissions in the history of press junkets, when he tried to seek redemption for a racially fuelled potentially violent act in his younger days we hadn’t known about. It certainly lent Cold Pursuit a grimmer edge than the filmmakers had intended.

Rated R for strong violence, drug material and some language including sexual references

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 24th, 2019