Over the last decade, Liam Neeson has developed a very particular set of skills–the ability to play an everyman who is thrown into violent situations that allow him to brutally kill people who get in his way. Starting in the Taken franchise and continuing into films such a Non-Stop and The Commuter, the Oscar-nominated actor has played the archetype so many times, it has become ripe for parody. And seems what Neeson himself is doing with Cold Pursuit.
A remake of the 2014 Norwegian thriller, In Order of Disappearance, and directed by that film’s director, Hans Petter Moland, the film follows Nels Coxman (Neeson), a mild-mannered snow-plow driver and pillar of his snow-bound community whose son dies in a drug-related incident. Coxman then takes it upon himself to dismantle the local drug organization from the ground up, one bad guy at a time.
That doesn’t seem much different from other films in Neeson’s filmography, but as you can see from the trailer, the vengeance is dealt out with a side order of black humor, much of it aimed at the implausibility of a common man becoming a killing machine overnight.
See for yourself:
Cold Pursuit opens on February 8, 2019
