Cold Pursuit

It’s so very tempting to say that Liam Neeson’s recent comments – about wanting to kill a random black man as punishment for a crime committed by another, different, unknown black man – have cast a pall over his latest revenge fantasy, Cold Pursuit. (Neeson shared this story by way of explaining, in the course of promoting this very movie, why he understands the appeal of revenge fantasies, thereby illustrating that he understands neither revenge nor public relations.)

But it would be difficult for there to be a greater pall over Cold Pursuit than the one the movie casts over itself. For this is a racist, sexist movie that appears to insist on the absolute necessity of its racism and sexism because, in fact, it’s a lot of random racist, sexist crap padding out this rancid excuse for a thriller that in large part contributes to how infuriatingly unwatchable it is.

Excising all that junk might have gotten the film down to the sort of 87-minute runtime that garbage that like this warrants (if it warrants any existence at all). But that still wouldn’t help with a more fundamental problem with the movie: that it makes no sense whatsoever.

Nels Coxman (Neeson) drives a snow plough in and around a Rocky Mountain ski-resort town, where his son, Kyle (Micheál Richardson) has just been murdered by soldiers of drug lord Trevor “Viking” Calcote (Tom Bateman) because – well, we never know why.

A suitcase of Viking’s cocaine has gone missing, but Cold Pursuit never bothers to let us know what Kyle had to do with that, or even if he did. Maybe Viking made a mistake? Maybe director Hans Petter Moland – remaking his own 2014 Norwegian film Kraftidioten – is offering commentary on the pointlessness of revenge thrillers and the moviegoing audience’s obvious thirst for them?

Like, does it even matter why Liam Neeson is going on another rage-fueled execution spree? But then why even bother with the son’s murder? Why not have anti-hero Coxman fly into a vigilante fit over something really minor and petty?

Maybe Viking left his fancy car purchased with drug money in the path of Coxman’s plough? It’s a possibility, but we’ll never know.

There’s no indication that there’s any satire in the offing. Even the few cheap callbacks to Fargo do nothing but remind us that filmmakers such as the Coen Brothers might have made this unpleasant mess palatable, or even genuinely entertaining.

Moland cannot manage the tone, however, and the whole endeavor is thoroughly appalling. The extended riff about kidnapping is bad, though a better filmmaker might have pulled it off; the dragged-out sight gag over poor dead Kyle’s body in the morgue is completely abhorrent.

Why are we invited to laugh at the horror of his shocked parents having to identify him?

Kyle’s mom, an utterly thankless role, is played by Laura Dern, who smartly gets the hell out of the movie as soon as she possibly can, before she can be humiliated the way that other women are here, like the caricatured Asian wife (Elizabeth Thai) of one ex drug runner, and Viking’s harridan of an ex (Julia Jones).

But why does Neeson disappear for a long stretch in the middle of the action? Moland gives us absolutely no reason to care about the turf war that Coxman stirs up between Viking and White Bull (Tom Jackson), the rival Native drug lord with whom Viking had an uneasy truce until the latter’s men started turning up dead.

We’ve learned to expect more from Neeson – memorable one-liners, riveting action sequences, a sense of purpose, a plot.

The movie does zip with the Kehoe cop (Emmy Rossum) who is investigating the local shenanigans, except force her to contend with the sexist “banter” of her older colleague (John Doman).

Cold Pursuit is the sort of abomination that thinks it can get away with abuse and bigotry because it’s coming from characters who are not very nice or outright villains, such as Viking’s horrendous exchange with an African-American hitman (Arnold Pinnock). That doesn’t excuse it or justify it.

It’s all engineered by Moland and screenwriter Frank Baldwin, who maneuver their narrative pawns into positions where they can be abused as a sideshowto all the bloody violence.

Come to think of it, maybe just perhaps they knew just how tedious the action stuff is, and thought to distract us?

COLD PURSUIT ( NO STARS ) • Directed by Hans Petter Moland •Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern •Rated R • 158 minutes • At Century Cinemas Del Monte, Century Marina, Maya Cinemas, Northridge Cinemas