Review of Cold Pursuit (2019) by Greatmartin — 08 Feb 2019

I have been a fan of Liam Neeson since the 1980s and have been watching his turning into an action star at the age of 58 with "Taken" and I wish he would take a detour now and then back to 'the good old days' like "Schindler's List", "Rob Roy" or "Love Actually". With "Cold Pursuit" we already know the formula of his losing a family member, in this case, his son, and then the bloodbath starts.

It isn't long before Nels Coxman (Neeson) is killing one guy after another, then choking one before shooting, wrapping another and dumping him down a mountains falls and I stopped counting after the body total reached 15 and that wasn't even half of it. In a sense score is kept for you as each death in listed on the screen. Along with the high body count there is blood all over the place from bride's gowns to snow to a murderer asking a victim to move off a rug to not bloody it. Many attempts at humor fail but a few really get across and the scenes filmed in Alberta standing in for Denver, and a fictionalized ski town called Kehoe, never fail to be anything but beautiful. Nels is a snow pile driver and aside from many shots of him clearing snow for traffic there is also 2 shots of ways to use the snow pile machinery to kill people that aren't half as bad as other killings in the movie. The whole basis of the story is 'a son for a son' when one son is killed and another is threatened before a third son is killed. The father of one son is really a sick, controlling guy who can't quite get the better of his ex-wife even though he is the head kingpin of drug distribution.

Talking about a wife though it seems Laura Dern will play a major part of the movie but is in it too briefly. Actually women have a better showing for a movie like this with Dern, Julia Jones as the aforementioned ex and Emmy Rossum as a serious get them police officer. I love her in "Shameless", the series on Showtime, and was glad to see her. There are many roles, including all those killed, giving the actors time to impress without all that time on the screen.

"Cold Pursuit" is an okay genre movie that most people will like but if you don't see it you won't miss it.