"Cold Pursuit" review

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