From Taken to Non-Stop to The Grey, Liam Neeson has faced everything possible, everywhere possible. In Cold Pursuit, directed by Hans Petter Moland; however, he takes his talents to the snowy mountains of Colorado with himself, a rifle, and a snowblower. I was pretty excited for this movie after the seeing the trailer with the great song choice of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and expected another Liam Neeson action-thriller with a high bodycount. And while this movie does have a high body count, it's far from your typical Liam Neeson flick.
Cold Pursuit follows the character of Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson), a hard-working citizen and dedicated snowblower. The story doesn't give much background into his relationship with his wife played by Laura Dern or his son, whose death drives the plot of the movie, but there's enough there to connect the dots. In that regard, I have to credit this movie for getting right into the action as it paid off throughout out as I never felt bored during the movie. Essentially, Liam Neeson's son gets caught up in some drug dealings at the airport he works at and wind up dead. His father Nels Coxman then decides to take matters into his own hands and track down the one's responsible.
This movie is not at what I expected but I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. At its core, Cold Pursuit is a dark comedy with sprinkled moments of gore-filled violence and drama. While doing all those things, it also wrestles with some social commentary regarding the treatment of Native Americans and an odd gay subplot which seemed quite forced to be honest. The three-way conflict between Nels Coxman, his son's killer, and the Native Americans was executed successfully for the most part and added some much needed depth to a movie that I didn't expect to have much of.
All around the board, the performances were solid and the villain played by Tom Bateman was witty, psychotic, and hot-tempered. To be honest, I was hoping for a little more Liam Neeson action as I found myself at a point during the movie where I forgot he was actually in it. The trailer for the movie may lead one to believe that this is action-packed but it is not. This is very much a slow and methodical action flick and most of the action scenes are shown in the trailer.
As for the comedy and the overall tone of the movie, it takes a little to adjust to but about twenty minutes into the film I was invested and understood what the director was going for. The comedy is dark and doesn't offer laugh-out-loud laughs but it had more hits than misses especially as the film moved on. I feel that this movie deserves a second watch, going in knowing what to expect and embracing it.
Overall, Cold Pursuit is not the typical "balls to the walls" action flick you would expect from Liam Neeson but it offers a refreshing take that may or not work for people. In my case, I had a really good time in the theater with this one and am definitely looking forward to seeing how it ages upon a second viewing. Cold Pursuit is out now and I recommend you give it go.
My Score: B-