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Cold Pursuit is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Hans Petter Moland and written by Frank Baldwin. An international 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 vengeful snowplow driver (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 Lionsgate Films and Summit Entertainment. It grossed $76 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics.
The cartel's drug lord, Trevor "Viking" Calcote, first suspects that these deaths are the work of his rival White Bull, a Ute people with whom he has 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 Ryan in retaliation, which starts a gang war. Nels's brother Brock, once a mob enforcer known as Wingman, tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and recommends a hitman known as "The Eskimo". The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for Nels' 90,000 but decides he can get another 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 kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman and takes Brock in his car. Since Brock is dying of cancer, he claims responsibility for the hits to protect his brother. Viking tries in vain to stop the war by using one of his own men (Dexter) as a scapegoating and sending White Bull the man's head. This is insufficient to placate White Bull, who shoots the messenger, Sly. Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Ryan from his prep school before White Bull's men can do so to draw Viking into an ambush. Nels treats the boy well and protects him from the violence to come. Nels' identity is revealed to Viking by the school's janitor. Though promised 10,000 for the tip, he too is killed after his disclosure.
Nels calls Viking and tells him to come to his house alone. When Viking says it will take him three hours, Nels takes Ryan with him to work. While Viking was lying, as he already knew Nels' address and was minutes away, he finds the house empty; his men toss the place to find clues about the kidnapper. While teaching Ryan how to drive the snow equipment, Nels meets Officers Dash and Gip on the road and says Ryan is his visiting nephew. The police then comment that they saw the cars at his place. Nels realizes Viking and his men are already on his trail and leaves with Ryan. Viking's men find out where Nels works and leave. Mustang, who has stayed behind at Nels's home and has been grieving over Dexter's senseless death, tips off the Ute that Viking was responsible for the death of White Bull's son and where he can be found. Mustang had been involved with Dexter in a gay relationship.
Nels hides Ryan in a safe place knowing that Viking and his men are coming. Nels is eventually ambushed and taken to Viking. Viking instructs them to take Nels to the garage to begin torturing him to find out where his son is but the Ute arrive. During the ensuing shootout, most of both groups are killed. Viking, attempting to drive away, is trapped when Nels uses machinery to impale Viking's car with a shorn tree trunk, allowing White Bull to shoot Viking in the chest. He dies when found by Kehoe patrol officers Kimberly Dash and Gip, but with his last breath is unable to give Nels' name to the police. Dash spots Ryan driving an industrial snow blower in the direction of Kehoe, but chooses not to follow, instead calling it into dispatch. As Nels leaves in his snowplow to continue his work, White Bull jumps into the cab; after initially holding Nels at gunpoint, the two men drive away together with both being satisfied for having avenged their respective children's deaths. Avalanche, one of White Bull's men, who had gone paragliding earlier, accidentally flies into the snowplow, being minced to death and shredded to bits. His random death is the last. Through the film, after each death, a black screen shows the name of the dead man, his gang nickname, and a religious or other symbol, such as a cross, a star-of-David, or a word in Arabic. After the big shoot-out between Viking's gang and the Ute gang, the black screen is almost filled with these memorials.
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.
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. Cold Pursuit Blu-ray | United States | Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy Lionsgate Films | 2019 | 119 min | Rated R | May 14, 2019 Studio Canal released it in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2019. Cold Pursuit Blu-Ray | United Kingdom | Studio Canal | 2019 | 119 min | Rated BBFC: 15 | June 24, 2019
In the United States and Canada, Cold Pursuit was released alongside What Men Want, and The Prodigy, and was projected to gross $7–10 million from 2,630 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $3.6 million on its first day, including $540,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $11 million, finishing third, behind The Lego Movie 2 and What Men Want. In its second weekend the film fell 45% to $6 million, finishing sixth, and then $3.3 million in its third weekend, finishing eighth.
Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, delivered a positive review, grading it a "B+": Richard Roeper, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, praised the film, awarding it 3.5 out of 4 stars:
In an appearance on Good Morning America, Neeson elaborated on his experience while denying being a racist, saying the incident occurred nearly 40 years ago, that he asked for physical attributes of the rapist other than race, that he would have done the same if the rapist was "a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian", that he had purposely gone into "black areas of the city", and that he "did seek help" from a priest after coming to his senses. Neeson said that the lesson of his experience was "to open up, to talk about these things", as there was still underlying "racism and bigotry" in both the United States and Northern Ireland. The controversy of Neeson's comments led to the cancellation of the red-carpet event for the premiere of the film.
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