My (Mostly) Spoiler-Free THoughts
But, good news! While it does play into the “Liam Neeson beats ass” tropes we’ve come to know and love, “Cold Pursuit” is far from just another stale action flick. There are three things this movie does really well: black humor, sporadic outbursts of shockingly brutal violence (often used for that aforementioned pitch-black humor), and presenting Neeson (sorry, Nels Coxman) as a normal dude. Unlike Taken or Nonstop, where Neeson plays different versions of the retired intelligence operative archetype, Nels Coxman has no special skills beyond driving a snow plow pretty well. And a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor can be drawn from Coxman’s situation, as he has to figure out things like how to dispose of bodies while working his way up the drug lord totem pole.
And like I said, “Cold Pursuit” utilizes its violence very effectively. More than once I found myself simultaneously wincing and laughing as criminals are executed in horrific, gruesome, and … admittetly funny… ways. There’s a really great device where whenever someone dies, a title card briefly presents their religion, name, and macho-sounding codename in plain white text. It’s taking that old rule of “show, don’t tell” and flipping it in a really unique way. The cast of criminals in “Cold Pursuit” are also more well-rounded than most - these guys all have unique personalities, and there are some damn near heartbreaking moments as they’re dispatched by cruel twists of fate, because a big part of “Cold Pursuit” is showing how cruel the world can be, and how any one of us can be casually tossed aside (or over a waterfall). The head honcho, “Viking” (played by Tom Bateman) is the polar (see what I did there?) opposite of Neeson’s character, broadly overacting in cartoonishly villainous ways, but it mostly works.
Of course, this movie’s got some problems. The action scenes are a little choppy in places. Laura Dern plays Neeson’s wife for the first third of the movie, before the screenwriter evidently decided she had nothing to do and wrote her out of the movie. And the movie could afford to be a few minutes shorter. But by and large, “Cold Pursuit” is a totally enjoyable, Fargo-esque thriller that’s worth your time. Give it a shot, or don’t. Life is meaningless. Sorry, Valentine’s Day apparently has me caught up in soul-crushing existential despair.