Sometimes, misrepresentation can harm a film just as surely as blunt force trauma to the face. If the trailers and posters suggests a certain kind of film and then you get something you didn’t expect, chances are it’s just as likely to confuse and confound you as it is to be a pleasant surprise and you can’t help but think that a lot of people were confused by Cold Pursuit.
To be fair, you can see why – after all, if I heard the words Liam Neeson, revenge and family in the same sentence, I’d probably think the exact same thing too; but while the film certainly contains all the components to essentially play out as “Taken in Colorado”, Hans Petter Moland (remaking his own movie In Order Of Disappearance) instead delivers a far more quirky, almost gentle tale of violent retribution that feels more like the Coen Brothers than some sort of bombastic action flick that sees Neeson slapping the shit out of those dumb enough to fuck with his relatives.
Upstanding, salt of the earth snowplow driver Nels Coxman has recently been honored Citizen of the Year by the ski resort town of Kehoe, Colorado for his years of tireless service keeping the roads clear of the mountains of snow that constantly fall. His awkward acceptance speech praises the institution of family while his wife, Grace watches on with pride. However, thanks to a cruel twist of fate, his family is about to be torn asunder when his son dies of what seems to be a herion overdose and even though the police seem to think that it’s a forgone conclusion, Nels simply won’t accept that as the reason that his son is currently residing in the local morgue.
After running into his boy’s battered work buddy, Dante, Nels finds that his son was just in the wrong place at the wrong time after Dante decided to swipe a bag of cocaine from one of the many drug shipments that plaque the city. But while his wife grows more horrified and distant at his apparent lack of grief, Nels launches a campaign of revenge against the men he holds responsible and soon finds himself climbing the ladder of a criminal empire in order to work his way to the top and the man known as Viking.
However, while Nels patiently picks off low level goons, his actions have a knock-on effect that send ripples through the entire town that ropes in the local police, Nels’ retired criminal brother and – most worryingly of all – the Ute criminal family that’s run by the stoic White Bull and soon numerous misunderstandings lead to a steadily rising bodycount as the various, lawless elements of Kehoe teeter on the edge of a gang war.
In the middle of all the farcical chaos, Nels keeps chipping away at whomever he can, but has he gone too far when he involves Viking’s young son by choosing to kidnap him?
So, as we’ve already established, Cold Pursuit is emphatically not your standard, bargin basement, Taken rip-off that Neeson seems to be treating as some sort of oddly strenuous retirement plan and anyone settling down to watch him dispatch goons with some skillful editing would probably have felt profoundly ripped off. However, seeing as the film has way more in common with the snowy eccentricity of Fargo, than any film that has Neeson rumble iconic threats down a phone, if you alter your expectations accordingly, the movie ends up being a sweetly strange black comedy that charts the disasterous ripple effect caused by revenge. Relying less on Neeson snapping wrists due to another disguised aspect of the film, we actually soon find that this is also a sprawling essemble piece with a surprisingly large amount of moving parts. Yes, Neeson’s serious everyman is the centrepiece, but as we spiral outward, we find that even the peripheral characters have memorable quirks and subplots. Take the two members of the Viking’s inner circle who are currently in the midst of a secret, gay relationship; or William Forsythe’s ex-criminal brother character who comes complete with a fiesty, Asian wife; or Emmy Rossum’s idealistic cop who hopes to somehow wipe away the criminal element in town. It’s the little touches like this that fill Cold Pursuit with a ton of personality that raises it above your average Neeson vengeance-fest.
It’s also pretty funny too, with a range of horrible deaths being inflicted on the sprawling cast each being amusingly punctuated by a title card announcing their untimely demise, their religious denomination and their ludicrous criminal nickname underneath their official title.
Impressively, it’s a joke that doesn’t get old and it helps that Moland has a nifty sense of comic timing and a healthy grasp of the absurd to aid each kill with the necessary amount of laughs, shock, or gavitas that it requires. Yes, the story tends to get sidetracked with little Tarrantino-equse side-stories like the goon who has a novel way of seducing maids at motels or White Bull’s quiet existential crisis that frequently go nowhere, but it’s these little flourishes that helps give the film a strangely soft unpredictable side, even when Nels is executing his son’s murderers with a sawn off rifle.
However, while I’m a big fan of the irregular tone, it does also mean that Cold Pursuit often trips over its own feet when it comes to it’s storytelling. While the movie certainly starts with Neeson front and centre, as the plot balloons in the second half, he tends to get lost in the shuffle until the escalating number of deaths thin the heard enough for him to resonate. Also, there’s also the rather frustrating matter of some actors getting underused altogether such as Laura Dern’s grieving wife who all but dissappears about a third of the way through. However, Neeson remains his arresting, gravelly self while getting to add a more gentle side to his aging, avenging angel (the scene where he reads the snow plow manual to the kidnapped son of his enemy is gold), and Tom Bateman manages to deliver a highly strung asshat of the highest order in his impressively spiteful shitheel of a villain.
However, in a weird turn of events, a lot of Cold Pursuit’s good points tend to end up cancelling each other out and the end result is a film that’s off-beat and fun while you’re unravelling it, but then ends up being strangely forgettable once it’s finished. Add to this that it doesn’t really do what it says on the tin (deadpan comedy thriller with moments of surrealistic humour probably isn’t what most viewers thought they were signing up for) and as a result, some may have immediately dismissed it despite its many positive attributes. If you want a mindless bone breaker you might want to plough another path, but if you’re in the mood for willfully strange thriller that takes its comedy as black as the surroundings are white, there are far colder avenues you could pursue.
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