This movie starts out slow, cold and depressing, and never very much escapes from this vibe. It sees a beta male character played by Liam Neeson, called Nels Coxman, gradually turning into a semi alpha male character, not dissimilar from Liam Neeson’s action movie from the year prior (The Commuter, 2018).
Cold Pursuit sets a slow pace, but thanks to decent screenplay, it kind of manages to hold attention still. It’s not the most entertaining movie Liam Neeson’s been involved in – not even close – but it’s probably not his worst work either.
In the first 22 minutes, Nels’ son has died, ruled an overdose, and Nels is on the verge of suicide himself now, until he discoveres his son was really murdered, so he goes after and kills someone involved while attempting to track down the root of the drug empire that’s to blame.
The main antagonist, Trevor ‘Viking’ Calcote, played by Tom Bateman, looks like a son of Quentin Tarantino, and quite appropriately, he plays a vice-pushing ringleader who is also particularly well informed about certain other habits deceiving the masses.
Also with the suspected Tarantino link, it should come as no surprise that this movie shows a lot of blood & gore – depicting violence in some very slow, very ugly scenes – seriously polluting the minds of the audience.
By 40 minutes in, Neeson’s character Nels has killed multiple people in separate scenes by punching them to near death before shooting them to finish them off, then dumped their bodies at a deserted snowy waterfall.
It gets a little more lighthearted and yet intriguing towards the end of the first hour, when Nels hires a hitman to take out Viking – the cartel boss behind his son’s murder – then the hitman double crosses Nels, doing a deal with Viking, then the hitman gets hit, and Viking goes after who he thinks hired him.
Pace is still slow due to low-tempo screenplay and solumn sound effects etc, but there’s a bit less grit and a bit more intrigue now.
Watch out for explicit man-on-man kissing at the start of the second hour – it’s not for everyone!
This movie had a bit more solid action towards the end, but never very much escapes the slow, gritty, irreverent atmosphere that it established early on. Bateman’s acting is strong and Neeson’s is decent too, but given the constant cold moody genre, I can’t rate it any better than So-So.