Movies - Cold Pursuit – Be ready for a great and cold thriller with Liam Neeson

By Mulder, 29 january 2019

“It’s a whirlwind of vengeance, violence and dark humour.” — Liam Neeson

Cold Pursuit is an American action film directed by Hans Petter Moland from a screenplay by Frank Baldwin. The film is a remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance, also directed by Moland. It stars Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Emmy Rossum, and Tom Bateman. The film is scheduled to be released on February 8, 2019, by Summit Entertainment in United States and February 27, 2019 by StudioCanal in France.

This action thriller infused with irreverent humor, stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a family man whose quiet life with his wife (Laura Dern) is upended following the mysterious death of their son. Nels’ search for justice turns into a vengeful hunt for Viking (Tom Bateman), a drug lord he believes is connected to the death. As one by one of Viking’s associates “disappear,” Nels goes from upstanding citizen to ice-cold vigilante, letting nothing — and no one — get in his way.

This twisted revenge story swirls around Neeson’s Nels Coxman, a snowplow driver in the Colorado ski resort of Kehoe. Just named Citizen of the Year for his services in keeping the roads open to the remote town, Coxman’s life swiftly spirals into amateur retribution and an escalating pile of corpses when his son (played by Micheál Richardson) is mistakenly killed by local gangsters over a stash of missing drugs. All Nels knows about killing people is what he’s read in crime novels, but to find out what happened to his son, Coxman sets off with a sawn-off hunting rifle — and unwittingly sets off a chain of events that will include a snowbound turf war, kidnapping, two rival crime lords, and violent run-ins with an array of colorful hoodlums.

Comparisons to classic Coen brothers movies – Fargo, in particular – greeted Hans Petter Moland’s original Norwegian film, In Order Of Disappearance, starring Stellan Skarsgård, when it opened to rave reviews and massive global box office in 2014. Other fans drew parallels to the depth and wit of dialogue of early Quentin Tarantino films. But while Moland is “obviously delighted” to have his work placed in those two ballparks, for him, he has his own unique style with his inspiration going back further to the films of another filmmaker known for walking the edge of darkness. “I grew up loving the films of Billy Wilder,” says Moland of the beloved and Oscar®-winning director of Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Some Like it Hot, and The Apartment. “I loved their darkness and their gallows humor, that great balance between the two. So when I was offered the chance to remake In Order Of Disappearance, this time in English, I took it.”

The idea to have Moland remake his own film came from producer Michael Shamberg, whose credits include Pulp Fiction, Out Of Sight and Get Shorty, among many others, and knows a fresh crime movie when he sees one. “The best part of my career has been working with singularly talented people,” says Shamberg. “When I saw In Order Of Disappearance, it had everything. And COLD PURSUIT has the same punch. Audiences will be emotionally invested in the characters, satisfied with it as an action film, and also be surprised by how funny it is. It’s a film where that balance has to be just right, and that’s why Hans Petter had to be the one to do it. And in the center of it all is the wonderful Liam Neeson, who brings his classic ‘man-of-action’ persona to the film — and then delightfully goes in a new direction with it.”

It’s also a story about multiple other twistedly complex characters, including two other fathers that Nels slams into. The first is Trevor Calcote, AKA “Viking,” a psychotic local drug lord played by Tom Bateman (costar of Murder on the Orient Express and Snatched). The second is White Bull, played by legendary Canadian actor and folk singer Tom Jackson, who brings a soulful gravitas to the role of a rival boss who runs a cabal of tough Native American gangsters – guys as deadpan as they are deadly – with a
dignity and coolness. “These are all bad guys. There are no good guys in this movie. So you have to start there, and then decipher, ‘Well, how bad is that guy?’” says Jackson of a conflict that ends with lots of blood spilled across white snow and which he says recalls films like The Wild Bunch.

For Cold Pursuit, Moland brought along much of his key crew from the Norwegian original while enlisting a new screenwriter, Frank Baldwin, and a supporting cast including Laura Dern as Coxman’s wife, Grace; Emmy Rossum as smart small-town cop Kim; and Julia Jones as Aya, the tough and calculating wife of the unhinged cartel chief Viking. “The female characters are the ones who are smart enough to distance themselves from the actions and stupidity of the men,” laughs Moland. “The men are domineering, self-important, and oblivious. They’re either deadly serious … or dead.”

Baldwin’s screenplay has particular fun with its richly drawn, bickering bad guys. “The stakes are high,” says the screenwriter, “but the men act massively self-important, and that’s where the humor comes from.” Moland notes that his original inspiration was a serious one. “The original idea came from me thinking, ‘If my son died in this way, would I just sit back and accept that happened? Or would I do something about it? And would it just lead to an endless escalation of violence?’” says Moland. “It’s kind of a heavy theme, well-suited for a dark comedy. There was a desire to not be restrained by genre, to allow different genres to happily live next to each other, to be genuinely horrifying and tragic, but also worth laughing at – just like life is.”

The result is something genuinely unique, a movie with incredible action shot through with an undercurrent of knowing humor and played out by a brilliant supporting cast. “That’s why this remake had to have Hans Petter directing it,” says Shamberg. “That tone is such a fine balance that I think only he could do it. This isn’t your typical revenge movie. It’s a movie about the futility of vengeance. It’s a violent film that’s anti-violence. Which is a bit of an oxymoron, but you get to have your cake, and eat it too!”

Synopsis :
Nels Coxman's quiet life as a snowplow driver in a glitzy Rocky Mountains resort town where he was just awarded Citizen of the Year is disrupted when his beloved son is murdered under mysterious circumstances. His search for the cause turns into a quest for revenge against a psychotic drug lord named Viking. Using his hunting skills to transform himself from upstanding citizen to cold-blooded vigilante, Coxman sets out to dismantle the cartel, triggering a chain of events leading to a turf war between Viking and a rival boss.

Cold Pursuit
Directed by Hans Petter Moland
Produced by Finn Gjerdrum, Stein B. Kvae, Michael Shamberg, Ameet Shukla
Written by Frank Baldwin
Based on In Order of Disappearance by Kim Fupz Aakeson
Starring Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, Laura Dern
Music by George Fenton
Cinematography : Philip Øgaard
Edited by Nicolaj Monberg
Production companies : StudioCanal, Summit Entertainment
Distributed by Summit Entertainment
Release date : February 8, 2019 (United States), February 27, 2019 (France)
Running time : 118 minutes

Photos : Copyright StudioCanal

(Source : Production Notes)