Cold Pursuit * * * *

Hi ho, hi ho, its off to kill we go...

     Cold Pursuit comes across as somewhat imitative, which is strange, as those involved  have established voices of their own. Indeed this is the second time director Petter Moland has made this film (he made it for TV in Norway under a different name).  Yet you can't help but feel there is more than a bit of Tarantino in this version, but it's still quite an enjoyable experience.
        Being the "go to" man for someone who can deliver righteous pay-back Liam Neeson is well cast, in either an ironic or deliberate way.
        Neeson plays a regular working guy called Coxman - a name which brings much mockery from his adversaries.  He works as a snow plowman in a ski-resort town, driving a big truck with a blade on the front to keep the roads clear.  Coxman doesn't expect trouble to come into his life. But then he's told his teenage son has died from a heroin overdose. This is early in the film, and in a mortuary scene which is more comic than distressing you begin to catch on that Cold Pursuit is definitely going to be tongue in cheek.
       Convinced his son is the victim of foul play, Coxman and his big fists go off to visit  the suspects; and if a punch in the mouth doesn't work he's also got a sawn-off shotgun.  With slides announcing the name and imminent death of each character it's got a bit of a Kill Bill feel about it.  As there is a significant body count there are a lot of slides.
      Nearly every character has a quirky disposition and a nick-name and is involved in the underworld of drug running and extortion. Coxman has to regularly go to the city to visit one of these gangsters "for a chat". In a repeating and stylized scene, he drives up the road which extends from the wilderness to the distant city making it look other worldly.
      After "chatting" with them he brings them back to his town. In beautifully photographed snowscapes he throws their bodies into a wild river.  And I must say the photographic use of the cold environment is one of the best features of Cold Pursuit.
      Visually, Cold Pursuit is a pleasure to look at (mostly). It's populated by highly entertaining characters, and offers you Liam Neeson dishing up some satisfying vengeance to very bad people.  Not with his "special set of skills" but rather, a brute force that matches his snow plough.
       Despite his brutality, later scenes show us that he hasn't lost his nurturing side, which asks a lot of the audience after what we have seen him do, yet the style of the film allows you to go with it, along with the very quirky ending.