Review of Cold Pursuit (2019) by Markhreviews — 19 Feb 2019

“Cold Pursuit” works at a lot of levels – on the ground, on mountain passes, in the air (the hang glider, really?!). It’s also a dark, sophisticated send-up of the revenge genre. With a title presumably inspired by the trope that “revenge is a dish best served cold,” this film starts out as an exercise in paint-by-numbers, but then veers off the guardrails into something much more interesting.

As Nels Coxman, Liam Neeson appears arthritically convincing as a 66-year-old action figure (“Taken,” “Taken 2,” if only there had been “the road not taken”). Coxman is a simple man. His Open Road snowplow business makes travel between Kehoe, Colorado and the outside world generally passable. He’s even named “Man of the Year” for his efforts. When his son is murdered by minions from a Denver drug gang, Coxman goes totally off the rails, murdering three drug runners complicit in the act and picking a fight with the drug lord himself. There’s no establishment of how Coxman has developed his sudden prowess in fights or with firearms. (I relied on the new Captain Marvel trailer for inspiration.) Neeson makes up for these oversights by brooding persuasively.

Eventually, though, this film evolves from a formulaic revenge story to a dark comedy. The first clue is that after the first death, a card pops up, joltingly, with the name of the deceased, his nickname and a cross above the writing. The process is repeated with each new killing. After a particularly brutal showdown, there are more than a dozen names on the screen. The genre-bending doesn’t end there. In a resort hotel, a menacing gangster growls about what he might do to the hotel employee who has displeased him – with his brutal comments on Yelp. When Coxman’s young abductee requests a bedtime story, Coxman obligingly lies quietly beside his captive, reading the child the sales brochure for a new snowplow he recently purchased. At the end of the film, the cast is listed “in order of disappearance.”.

This last bit is a deep bow to the original source material: the Norwegian film “In Order of Disappearance” (2014) starring Stellan Skarsgard. Much of the film has a Scandinavian sensibility, particularly since Norwegian director Hens Petter Moland has directed this film as well as the original.

“Cold Pursuit” is refreshing, sometimes exhilarating and a totally unexpected departure from the revenge genre. If “Taken” and “Fargo” had a lovechild, and the Coen brothers acted as midwives, this might be that movie. But be forewarned: there’s a lot more blood in “Cold Pursuit” than that wood chipper ever generated.