Cold Pursuit (2019)
Cold Pursuit is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Hans Petter Moland from a screenplay by Frank Baldwin. A British-American co-production, the film stars Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, and Laura Dern. It is a remake of the 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten), also directed by Moland, and follows a brooding and vengeful snowplow driver (Liam Neeson) who starts killing the members of a drug cartel following the murder of his son. The film was released in the United States on February 8, 2019, by Summit Entertainment. It grossed $76 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Neeson and Jackson’s performances, action sequences and dark humor.
Plot.
After being awarded Citizen of the Year by the fictional ski resort of Kehoe, Colorado, snowplow driver Nels Coxman’s quiet life is disrupted when his son dies from a forced opium overdose. He learns that his son was murdered by a Denver drug cartel. He decides to seek vigilante justice, makes a sawed-off rifle, and kills three members of the cartel, dumping their bodies in a nearby river. Nels’s wife Grace (angry at her husband’s seemingly cold lack of grief) leaves him. The cartel’s psychopathic leader, drug lord Trevor “Viking” Calcote, first suspects that these deaths areRELATED:
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the work of his rival White Bull, a Ute with whom he has so far avoided conflict. Viking has one of Bull’s gangsters murdered, not knowing it is White Bull’s only son. This drives White Bull to seek vengeance, and he orders his men to kidnap Viking’s young son in retaliation, which starts a gang war.
Nels seeks advice from his brother Brock, once a mob enforcer known as Wingman, and learns about Viking. Brock tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and he recommends a transplanted African-American hitman known as “The Eskimo”. The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for US$90,000, but decides he can
get another US$90,000 from Viking by informing him that Coxman has hired him for the hit. Viking does not appreciate the Eskimo’s “lack of professional ethics” and subsequently kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman, and he takes Brock in his car. Since Brock is dying of rectal cancer, he claims responsibility for the hits to protect his brother. Viking tries in vain to stop the gang war by using one of his own men as a scapegoat and sending White Bull the man’s head. This is insufficient to placate White Bull, who shoots the messenger.
Production.
The participation of actor Liam Neeson, director Hans Petter Moland and producers Michael Shamberg and StudioCanal in making the film, originally titled Hard Powder, was announced in January 2017. In March 2017, Domenick Lombardozzi, Emmy Rossum, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Laura Dern, William Forsythe, Julia Jones, and John Doman joined the cast of the film. The next month, Aleks Paunovic joined. Principal photography began in March 2017, in Alberta, Canada. Filming also took place in Vancouver and Fernie, British Columbia, and around Winnipeg and Gimli, Manitoba. While Moland had hoped to shoot in the Banff and Jasper national parks, the permit was denied by Parks Canada, which cited concerns about the film’s environmental impact, and over the depiction of the First Nations gangsters led by Tom Jackson’s character. Jackson provided a letter in support of the project.
Release.
In November 2017, Summit Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film. Its title was changed from Hard Powder to Cold Pursuit, and it was released on February 8, 2019 in the United States, and February 22 in the United Kingdom. The film’s February 5, 2019, red carpet premiere was cancelled because of comments made by Neeson the previous day, regarding a past incident in his life, which many interpreted as racist. The film was released on Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital download in the United States on May 14, 2019 by Lionsgate Films. The (Region A) Blu-ray is released as a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD package. Studio Canal released it in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2019.RELATED:
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