Liam Neeson plows through ‘Cold Pursuit’

Cold Pursuit is a 2019 American black comedy action film directed by Hans Petter Moland from a screenplay by Frank Baldwin. It stars Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, and Tom Bateman. It is a remake of the 2014 Norwegian vigilante film ‘In Order of Disappearance’, also directed by Moland. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 49 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10.

The website’s critical consensus reads, “Cold Pursuit delivers the action audiences expect from a Liam Neeson thriller -- along with humour and a sophisticated streak that make this an uncommonly effective remake. “On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating “generally favourable reviews”. Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, delivered a positive review, grading it with a “B+”, saying: “If [Cold Pursuit] sounds like murder-by-numbers Liam Neeson Mad Libs, well, it kind of is.

But what sets Cold Pursuit apart from its predecessors is its tone. It has the jokey, self-amused vibe of an Elmore Leonard novel or one of those arch, wannabe Tarantino knock-offs that sprouted up like toadstools in the wake of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and were quickly forgotten. It knows exactly what kind of movie it is, but that doesn’t stand in the way of it goosing its bloodbath set pieces with irreverent, off-kilter gallows humour.”

Richard Roeper, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, praised the film, awarding it 3.5 out of 4 stars, saying, “As characters with nicknames such as Sly and Mustang and Smoke and War Dog and Shiv and Drayno enter and often quickly exit the picture, Cold Pursuit moves forward with the assured and deliberate force of Nels’ massive snowplow. And with Neeson/ Nels at the wheel, Cold Pursuit is one fantastically hot mess of a movie.”