Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Hans Petter Moland
Screenplay by: Frank Baldwin
Based on the Movie, ‘Kraftidioten’ Written by: Kim Fupz Aakeson
Produced by: Michael Shamberg p.g.a, Ameet Shukla p.g.a
Starring: Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Laura Dern, John Doman, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, Gus Halper, Micheál Richardson, Michael Eklund, Bradley Stryker, Wesley Macinnes, Nicholas Holmes, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Michael Adamthwaite, William Forsythe, Elizabeth Thai, David O’Hara, Raoul Trujillo, Nathaniel Arcand, Glen Gould, Mitchell Saddleback, Christopher Logan, Arnold Pinnock and Ben Cotton.
An English remake of the Norwegian film, In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten) (2014), we certainly see a lot of people get, disappeared.
Set in the snowy mountains of Kehoe, Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) has just won the Citizen of the Year award.
He’s a simple, family man. He plows snow so others can get to where they need to be. In his speech he says he was lucky, he picked a good road early and stayed on it.
Until his son is killed by drug dealers.
Cold Pursuit is a bloody revenge film filled with gangsters with names like: The Eskimo, Speedo and Wingman… Because, well, it’s a gangster thing.
There’s this quirky dark humour where small-town cop Gip (John Doman) thinks drugs should be legalised – to give the people what they want, tax the shit out of it, so the government can double the cops’ pay.
But more than that, the sheer number of people who get killed (see the number of actors cast above) and how they get killed, is… funny.
There are so many funny moments that mostly hit the mark and sometimes don’t. Pink phones and rubber ducks didn’t quite make it for me.
But added details like the plush hotel with the white fake fur reception desk getting a buff and brush, tickled.
What I realised as the film progressed was the presence of Liam Neeson as the main character, and the clever way director, Hans Petter Moland, uses Neeson’s gravitas for comic effect.
I really like Neeson in this film: still the hero, still the family man – like we’ve seen so many times before – but all that history he owns in that hero-family-man role is used to add another layer to the film.
A revenge, shoot-em-up movie with elements of gangster turned on its head with a super-food conscious villain (AKA Viking), a Thai ball-breaker wife making a tropical paradise in the middle of snowy mountains, a profile-in-pink drug dealer who also sells wedding dresses and drug dealing Native Americans who adore wearing mustard yellow gloves.
Sure the humour is laid on a bit thick and tried too hard at times, but the balance of action, drama, violence and those gallows-humour, ticklish moments made for a (mostly) great entertainer.
Got to say, Liam Neeson’s still got it.