{"id":2606,"date":"2019-02-13T15:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-13T20:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/?p=2606"},"modified":"2019-02-13T14:57:29","modified_gmt":"2019-02-13T19:57:29","slug":"review-cold-pursuit-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/review-cold-pursuit-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW \u2014 Cold Pursuit (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

For over a decade, Academy Award-nominee Liam Neeson has been portraying similar tough-guy roles: murderous government agents (\u201cTaken\u201d); air marshals (\u201cNon-Stop\u201d); detectives (\u201cA Walk Among The Tombstones\u201d); and hitmen (\u201cRun All Night\u201d). Now he is a snowplow driver? Yes, but tough guy he continues to be, still with marvelous grace and intimidating intensity. From Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland; writer Frank Baldwin; and Summit Entertainment comes \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019), an American remake of \u201cIn Order Of Disappearance\u201d (2014), a Norwegian film also by Hans Petter Moland.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Set in Colorado, \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) follows the life of snowplow driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson), who, after winning his town\u2019s \u201cCitizen Of The Year\u201d Award, has his life come crashing down when his son, Kyle (Miche\u00e1l Richardson, Neeson\u2019s son in real life) is killed by Trevor \u201cViking\u201d Calcote (Tom Bateman), a murderous and violent drug lord. After learning who killed his son, Nels goes from being an upstanding citizen to one on a revenge mission to find and kill Viking by any means necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In terms of positives, \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) undoubtedly succeeds in three ways: intense action sequences, a well-done job by Liam Neeson, and humorous, dark comedy. After multiple roles in murder films, one would expect \u201cLiam Neeson killing someone\u201d to get boring, but on the contrary, here he keeps himself in top form. \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019), while not revolutionary, manages to entertain audiences whenever Liam Neeson is on a murder spree. Neeson brings a charm and threatening quality to the character that is fitting. Unfortunately, Neeson\u2019s performance is unable to outshine the weak dialogue and overall screenplay. However, the actors do manage to deliver many clever and \u201claugh-out-loud\u201d jokes, a pleasant surprise in a violent murder movie.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Beyond successful action scenes and a compelling protagonist, \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) feels like a pretty clich\u00e9d revenge thriller. The villain constantly tries to be menacing without ever actually intimidating the audience, much like his deadly employees; the people who do wind up dying don\u2019t shock the audience, \u00a0and Neeson barely seems in any actual danger. Additionally, some characters\u2019 story arcs are introduced without having any impact on the film. For instance, there is a police officer, played by Emmy Rossum, who is constantly investigating the cause of Liam Neeson\u2019s son\u2019s death. By the end of the story, her arc does nothing to enhance the story but distracts from it. \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) in scattering around too many characters\u2019 stories ends up taking the emotion out of all of them. Another massive downside is the total lack and waste of Laura Dern, who plays Grace Coxman. Laura Dern is an Academy Award-nominated actress with tremendous talent and is not in the film for more than two minutes! Also, without spoiling, the reason why she is barely in the movie is weakly written because it feels like the production couldn\u2019t afford to keep her on set so had to figure out a way to get rid of her character.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Even though the film has an incredible lead, enjoyable action, and great comedy, \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) is a stereotypical revenge thriller with a boring and forgettable antagonist. \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d is by no means terrible, just a letdown; thus forcing me to rate it a 41%. There are far better Liam Neeson thrillers out there, but \u201cCold Pursuit\u201d (2019) is definitely not the worst, just not the best either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For over a decade, Academy Award-nominee Liam Neeson has been portraying similar tough-guy roles: murderous government agents (\u201cTaken\u201d); air marshals (\u201cNon-Stop\u201d); detectives (\u201cA Walk Among The Tombstones\u201d); and hitmen (\u201cRun… Continue reading “REVIEW \u2014 Cold Pursuit (2019)”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":2611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,200],"tags":[485,484,214,486],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-2606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-recent","tag-cold-pursuit","tag-liam-neeson","tag-movie-review","tag-revenge-thriller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-G2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/unnamed-25.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}