A fun time in the cold if you can believe it. Laugh a little; cry a little.
Cold Pursuit
Grade: B
Director: Cold Pursuit
Grade:
Director: Hans Petter Moland (Kraftidioten)
Screenplay: Frank Baldwin (based on the film Kraftidioten by Kim Fupz Aakeson)
Cast: Liam Neeson (Mark Felt), Laura Dern (Downsizing)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 59 min
By: John DeSando
(Kraftidioten)
Screenplay: Frank Baldwin (based on the film Kraftidioten by Kim Fupz Aakeson)
Cast: Liam Neeson (Mark Felt), Laura Dern (Downsizing)
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 59 min
By: John DeSando
Since 2008’s Taken, Liam Neeson has been chasing bad guys (who do bad things to his families) to give the audience a satisfactory sense of comeuppance. He’s chasing miscreants in his newest revenge caper, Cold Pursuit; they have murdered his son, and he’s not happy.
Neeson’s Nels Coxman drives a huge snowplow in the small town of Kehoe, where he received citizen of the year before his son was murdered. After that, he becomes the Charles-Bronson type of vigilante but with a limited empathy for his victims or at least a sincere vengeance that makes the audience sympathetic to his mission.
The new ingredient for these abduction/murder plots is a sense of Coen-like humor, or Tarantino. The gangsters have unique personalities and sometimes come across with a witty or silly line, depending on the goon.
As in Fargo, the white snow is juxtaposed with the darkness of the mobs, made up of white drug dealers and native American hoods. Rounding out the motley crew is a female cop, a young officer echoing Marge without the gravity and with a bit of her irony. With the light humor thrown around, you will be reminded of the filmmakers who figured out that even crooks can laugh.
Cold Pursuit is cold enough, but with a little warmth spread around, audiences will have their blood and smile, only this time it’s not Tarantino or Coen, but Hans Petter Moland, whose Kraftidioten was the inspiration for this remake.
It’s a freezing good time where the air is crisp and the bodies well preserved in a revenge zone that continues to delight with variations on a genre that will not die.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
