'Cold Pursuit' A Review

Cold Pursuit is a black comedy revenge movie about a snowplow driver Nels(Liam Neeson) in ski resort town Kehoe, CO whose son is killed by gangsters who he then begins to kill one by one inadvertently starting a turf war between two Denver based drug dealers Viking(Tom Bateman) and White Bull(Tom Jackson).

There is no denying Neeson is a movie star, his mere presence is watchable, and clearly the past decade have produced a series of successes for him with variations on the growling, vengeful, paternal force. But after a dozen or so movies the ability to engage with basically the same story line and character over and over has worn thin. Bateman as the man heavy is starkly miscast and is not really intimidating, funny, or engaging he's just kind of boring and the fact much of the bloated run time is spent developing his character, such as it is, is quite bizarre. Jackson as the other heavy is wonderful as is his gang of Native thugs but unfortunately the characters aren't given much screen time or much to do. Emmy Rossum as the local detective, Laura Dern as Nels wife, and Julia Jones as Viking's ex-wife are all great but are criminally underutilized.

The problems with the movie are many fold but the most egregious is its tone. It shoots for something like 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag crossed with Snatch which is kind of bizarre because the prevelance of the Tartinto lite film is about twenty years in the review and tastes and cinema have progressed significantly since then. Regardless, the almost flippant comic violence and total eschewing of any kind of emotional reality doesn't particularly work and its not even rigidly adhered to. There are funny scenes and poignant scenes and natural panoramas and existential monologues all smashed together in the hopes that simply putting them next to each other will make them fit. There's no consistency. This coupled with the fact that there are so many characters none, even Neeson's Nels, is really focused on and as such there is no real investment in the story nor effect when the long series of deaths begin.

An adaptation of a Norwegian movie that is seemingly aping a certain foregone late 90's American aesthetic the result is a weird jumbled semi-coherent mess with a couple scenes that really grab you. Worth a watch only on a sick day or a lazy Sunday.

Stream It.