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Cold Pursuit

4/10

Stars: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, Tom Jackson

Director: Hans Petter Moland

Even though it's made by the same director, this is a much inferior remake of a Scandinavian thriller from 2014, played considerably more broadly for comedy, even as its body count mounts.

Neeson does give it a little clout in the role created by Stellan Skarsgard, as the snowplough driver from the snowy wilds of Colorado, whose son (Micheal Richardson) becomes involved with drug-running gangsters who kill him and leave his body on the snow-covered highway.

Neeson, whose wife (Dern) is soon to leave him, is about to commit suicide when a chance encounter puts him on the track of one of the hoodlums involved. Improbably, he dispatches the killers one by one, their names appearing on screen with a symbol of their religion as they are crossed off Neeson's list - a device repeated from the original film, whose director this time allows far too much room for some wild supporting acting, to undercut the thriller side of a film whose cartoon violence becomes monotonous long before the end.

But the chief gangster's young son, pretty much the only sympathetic character in the film, is well played by Nicholas Holmes, as rival gangs of 'Denver Sharpies' and native Ute Americans complete Neeson's job for him before the movie has ended.

David Quinlan

USA/UK/Canada/Norway 2019. UK Distributor: Studio Canal. Colour (unspecified).
118 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 18 Feb 2019