‘Cold Pursuit’ review: Self-aware or tone deaf?

Cold Pursuit, Hans Petter Moland’s remake of his 2014 Norwegian film, In Order of Disappearance, begins by quoting Oscar Wilde: “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go”. Moland clearly relishes the humour in Wilde’s words and interprets the latter half of that sentence in a rather twisted fashion in this revenge drama. There are systematic vengeance-fuelled murders, where men die one after another, providing contentment to Liam Neeson’s Nels Coxman (playing father on a mission, yet again) and dark humour to the audience. If one were to expect a Taken (2008) from Neeson, the film thankfully dismantles the vengeance genre and infuses it with absurd characters and flavours of an icy town. There isn’t an ambitious busting of a global nexus but a turf war between drug lords in a snow-capped town in Colorado. Neeson’s journey is not the only track, the anti-hero is a megalomaniac but with traits that could be relatable to a millennial parent on a pegan diet and chucklesome inter-titles. There’s more to look forward to than how and who will Neeson kill next.

Set in freezing temperatures, the film sees Neeson — comically-one toned and stoic as a snow-plougher — inadvertently sparking off a gang war between Trevor Calcote (Tom Bateman) aka Viking, a drug lord obsessed with his son’s diet, and White Bull (Tom Jackson), a Native American drug kingpin. While the film is primarily Neeson’s violent journey of catharsis, Moland extends the ambit of retribution to others. White Bull has also lost his son so his pursuit for revenge is centred around his personal loss but underneath is deep and long-standing anger. The rage is rooted not only in the history of ethnic subservience but also the appropriation of Native American culture. We see him walk through a shop, lift a traditional Native American garment and disapprovingly find ‘Made it China’ on its label. He also gets his ‘visually loud but audibly silent’ moment of outburst, which is oddly evocative.

But all said and done, with all its humour, wit and subtle commentary, the film ventures into a zone of impudence that can be either be argued as ‘morally problematic’ or ‘intended irreverence’. The film often finds itself being racially offensive and tone-deaf with liberal usage of stereotypes. A white man refers to a Native American man as ‘Tonto’ (which itself carries a long history of whitewashing), a young attractive Asian woman, married to a white American sugar-daddy, behaves like an outright caricature, and a slur against a character of colour (Shiv) is seemingly beeped out by the Censor Board.

In this macho blood-thirsty world, the women — be it wives or a cop — are sidelined and used as props. But the film pushes for irreverence by appearing self-aware and intentional. You glean that from the way it goes overboard — almost as a pre-emptive defence. But after Neeson’s controversially racist comments to a newspaper before the film’s release (leading to the cancellation of its red carpet premiere), one wonders how much of a film like this is deliberate cheekiness and how much arising out of a ‘primal urge’.