Cold Pur­suit

On the pub­lic­i­ty tour for Cold Pur­suit, Liam Nee­son told a reporter from The Inde­pen­dent that he once roamed the streets with a cosh ​“hop­ing some ​‘black bas­tard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me” so he could ​“kill them” in retal­i­a­tion for the rape of a close friend. Regard­less of whether you’re inclined to give Nee­son the ben­e­fit of the doubt of not, his remarks leave a sour taste and have undoubt­ed­ly cast a shad­ow over the film, espe­cial­ly giv­en its rather sim­plis­tic revenge thriller template.

In Hans Pet­ter Moland’s Eng­lish-lan­guage remake of his own In Order of Dis­ap­pear­ance from 2014, erst­while Oscar win­ner turned action hero Nee­son plays a tac­i­turn snow­plow dri­ver. His some­what improb­a­bly named Nels Cox­man clears a path through the Col­orado hin­ter­land out­side Den­ver, is admired by locals for his unstint­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism and is hap­pi­ly mar­ried to wife Grace (Lau­ra Dern).

Regret­tably, his son Kyle (Micheál Richard­son) is mur­dered by a rum bunch of coke-deal­ing vil­lains led by Tom Bateman’s whin­ing yet hilar­i­ous Trevor ​“Viking” Cal­cote. When Cox­man seeks ret­ri­bu­tion for his son’s untime­ly demise, the bod­ies swift­ly mount up and a rival mob run by a Native Amer­i­can named White Bull (Tom Jack­son) come into play.

Cold Pur­suit is marked­ly sim­i­lar to Moland’s orig­i­nal, both wicked­ly fun­ny and filled with grip­ping action. The jokes are numer­ous and var­ied, with a sight gag set in a morgue and a smart quip about William Goldman’s ​‘Lord of the Flies’ par­tic­u­lar high­lights. Tense set pieces burst into life with a fre­quen­cy and vital­i­ty lack­ing in less­er genre work. There’s blood-let­ting aplen­ty and an appro­pri­ate lev­el of mal­ice for a piece steeped in Scan­di noir – indeed, fans of shows like The Killing will lap it up, as will those of the Coen broth­ers’ snow­bound black com­e­dy Far­go and Noah Hawley’s sub­se­quent TV adaptation.

Nor­we­gian cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Philip Øgaard’s does a fine job of accen­tu­at­ing the feel­ing of iso­la­tion one would pre­sum­ably feel when tra­vers­ing the frost-bit­ten Col­orado land­scape, while a series of unex­pect­ed musi­cal cues punch up the laughs just as much as the snap­py dia­logue (Aqua’s ​‘Bar­bie Girl’ has nev­er sound­ed so good).

On a neg­a­tive note, it’s a shame that Lau­ra Dern is giv­en so lit­tle to do; restrict­ed to a weed-smok­ing cameo, her thank­less role is a bizarre waste of such a tal­ent­ed actor. It would have been more pru­dent to give her the lead and Nee­son the blaz­ing bit-part. That aside, Cold Pur­suit is a sol­id addi­tion to the genre, even if it doesn’t tell us any­thing new about the world, man’s inhu­man­i­ty or the nature of revenge itself.