Cold Pursuit (2019)
Directed by Hans Pettier Moland
Written by Frank Baldwin
Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, Julia Jones
Release Date February 28th, 2019
Published February 27th, 2019
Cold Pursuit is the latest attempt to prop up the old guy action star genre. The film is an exercise in silly violence and black humor that is rarely exciting and rarely humorous. Director Hans Petter Moland had more success perhaps the first time he made this exact same movie in Sweden under the title In Order of Disappearance. That film was also an exercise in the old guy action movie genre with Stellan Skarsgard leading the way and doing about as much as Neeson does here.
Cold Pursuit stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a snow plow driver in the Colorado Rockies whose job is to keep one road open between a small skiing town and the outside world. Nels is popular in his small town where he has recently been named citizen of the year. Things however take an unfortunate turn when Nels’ son is killed by drug dealers. That’s what he believes happened, cops tell him that his son overdosed.
Being Liam Neeson and thus better than a police detective, Nels sets out to find the drug dealers and begins killing his way up the drug chain of command from the low level dealers who did the killing all the way up to the Denver based kingpin, nicknamed Viking (Tom Bateman). Viking is a cold-hearted killer who, though he employs flunkies for most of his dirty work, isn’t afraid to do some of his own killing.
While Nels is searching for Viking, Viking is unwittingly searching for him while accidentally blaming a rival gang of Native American drug dealers for the murders that Nels is committing. This only serves to amp up the danger and the bloodshed while Nels flies under the radar for a while creating chaos and unwittingly fomenting the showdown between Viking and his hated rivals in the drug trade.
Cold Pursuit is efficiently crafted and has a stark and striking setting. Director Hans Petter Moland has a leg up on this material as he did make this movie before. Moland is no stranger to the cold climate as his earlier movie was set in the barren, snowy outlands of Sweden. Moland knows that red blood against white snow is a strong visual as is steamy breath against moonlit darkness. These motifs aren’t exactly new but they are more effective than the silly story of Cold Pursuit.
Liam Neeson appears as tired of his action movie persona as we are. His Nels may be a tough guy but his age is showing in the bone weary exhaustion in his face and manner. Neeson has spoken of retiring his action movie character but with the terrible, The Commuter, having made more than $100 million dollars at the worldwide box office it appears that only Neeson and film critics, like me, are actually tired of movies like Cold Pursuit.
Just how tired is Liam Neeson? He disappears from the movie as if he needed a nap before resuming the plot. Partway through the second act, Nels goes offscreen while we follow the bad guys and their machinations against each other while they are unaware of Nels and his one man war against them. Tom Bateman, a British stage actor, is not a bad actor but since we don’t know who he is, he isn’t particularly compelling.
A role like Viking needed a character actor, perhaps a younger Christopher Walken type. A Walken like actor could have transformed this character with his innate weirdness and oddball tangents. Bateman is playing the role with a good deal of energy and gusto but he’s far too serious. He’s approaching the material with a straight up bad guy performance and there is nothing special about it. The bad guy role is as perfunctory as the plot which literally ticks off a list of kill after kill with names on the screen that get crossed out as the movie goes on.
I’m aware that Cold Pursuit was intended to have some black humor to it but none of the humor lands all that well. One example of the film’s approach to dark humor happens when Nels goes to identify his son’s body. As Nels waits awkwardly to make the identification we watch while a morgue table rises slowly from the floor to eye level. The table takes forever to rise and we are supposed to, I assume, find it hilariously awkward as the body of Nels’ son rises into the frame.
Did you know that the brilliant Laura Dern is in Cold Pursuit? Of all of the sins of this perfunctory, forgettable, predictable action movie, casting Laura Dern only to treat her like some unknown day player is perhaps the film’s greatest sin. Why bother paying to have someone of Laura Dern’s stature when you have absolutely no interest in using her talent. Dern plays Neeson’s wife and after their son is killed her role is reduced to sulky resentment toward her husband before she just disappears.
