Cold Pursuit (2019)
Directed by: Hans Petter Moland
Cast: Liam Neeson and some other people
As I sit here
in my underwear, recovering from surgery and listening to a wound vac suck blood
out of my abdomen, I know there is only one man who can heal me. Liam freaking
Neeson. Only he can bring justice to the carnage that has befallen me. The man
has killed because his daughter was taken, his murdered wife was, well,
murdered, and hungry wolves had the audacity to try to eat him. That just pissed
him off. Now he would help me to gather the strength I need to carry on.
Liam Neeson
is a man of few words in “Cold Pursuit”. His son gets killed because that’s
what happens to people who are related to Liam Neeson. This leads Liam on a
quest to find out what his son did for a living because he barely knew him when
he was alive. Of course in Liam Neeson movies, only death matters. Liam climbs
up the ladder of drug dealing scum in Colorado and relishing every kill along
the way. This inadvertently starts a drug war between the corporate gang in Denver
and the Indian gang that split the drug trade. Neeson is so cold blooded he can
start drug wars without even meaning to. It all ends with gunfights and snowblowers
as Neeson takes out the trash.
I was in the
hospital for two weeks recovering from surgery. As I sat there watching Friends
reruns and more episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians than I’d care to
admit, I found myself thinking of all the other things I rather be watching.
Like anything other than Kardashians going to Bali to find themselves. But when
you’re pumping morphine into your body for pain, everything seems very
reasonable. I really did want to know if Kanye and Kim were going to confront
Kanye’s old friend in Chicago. But now that I’m not tied down, my head is free
of morphine and Kardashians. It was a very potent mix.
Praise the
movie gods as along comes Liam Neeson to drive the Calabasas Kardashians out of
my head with his never-ending quest to kill anything that displeases him. “Cold
Pursuit” is a remake of a Norwegian movie, “In Order of Disappearance”. In a way,
this plays against Neeson’s strengths. The original movie was full of humor as
it showed the two gangs plotting against each other and amusingly taking each
other out. The problem is that Liam disappears for a while as the movie shifts
focus on the gangs plotting and scheming. When he does appear, he’s back to his
dead serious demeanor that we know and love but it sometimes feels out of place
with the rest of the cast making light of murder and mayhem.
“Cold Pursuit”
turns a Norwegian revenge movie into a standard Liam Neeson flick. It’s got all
the elements you would expect from a Neeson movie with some goofy drug war
story on top. It’s worth a look.
SCORE: 3 out of 4 for endlessly cold pursuits