Cold Pursuit (Dir Hans Petter Moland, 1 h 58 m)

Whither Liam Neeson? Once upon a time, Liam Neeson was an actor most famed for serious dramatic roles throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, following Schindler's List and his breakthrough to mainstream success. But somewhere in the last 15 years, round about 2008's Taken, he went onto cinematic autopilot, playing a succession of grizzled, remarkably skilled, and exceedingly violent characters whose one defining trait was being grizzled remarkably skilled violent men. There, he's languished, apart from sterling voice work in children's films, and occasional lampshading cameos in so-so comedy films, being Liam Neeson playing (husky voice) Liam Neeson. And, despite Cold Pursuit being a film as darkly funny as it is brutally violent, and despite a decidedly oddball supporting cast, its greatest triumph is a role in which Neeson finally begins to enjoy and lampoon this archetype he has become, in what may be his oddest, and certainly most memorable, action role to date.

Based on Moland's Norwegian comedy, In Order of Disappearance, and, remarkably for a Hollywood remake, sharing almost every major story beat, (and even some of the jokes, with Stellan Skarsgård's protagonist named Dickman to Neeson's Coxman), the film wastes no time in getting down to business, with Coxman's local award overshadowed by the death of his son after a drugs overdose. Sensing something out of character in his son's death, and, after a tipoff from a friend of his son, soon scything his way through the footsoldiers of the local druglord, Trevor "Viking" Chalcott (a brilliantly unhinged performance by Tom Bateman, who is as idiosyncratic as he is ruthless, controlling his son's diet and axing friend and foe alike with little warning), Coxman soon finds himself at the centre of a war between Viking and Native American mobster, White Bull (Tom Jackson, filling his character with a grace and a sincerity that make his scenes stand out in a film full of great performances), as the violence between the two clans escalates to a perfect climax.

In a film that kept its tongue less firmly in cheek, this would have been yet another so-so Neeson performance-an obsessive man, set on revenge for a son that he barely knows anythng about and driving his wife (an isolated and emotionally fragile Laura Dern) away, as his grief overtakes him and he almost comits suicide, before he turns his mind to revenge. From this point onwards, Moland takes delight in putting the typical Neeson tropes into odd and unfamiliar settings-Coxman's particular set of skills seem to focus around his driving and snowplow related abilities, and at one point he admits his idea to hide the bodies that rapidly pile up comes from a crime novel-whilst a fight between Coxman and one of Viking's henchmen pauses in a moment that sees both burst into tired laughter before the hapless drug dealer is offed. Indeed, the film rests well upon Neeson's comic chops, and some of the scenes are almost achingly funny, as Neeson plays straight-man to a small army of oddballs and crazed gangsters.

This is not to say Neeson is perfect in this film-as the later acts concern themselves with the fallout and ramping up of tension between Viking and White Bull, so Neeson finds himself sidelined, with little to do, although his relationship with Viking's son, whose relationship with his neurotic and destructive father is unhealthy to say the least, is well-fleshed out in the scenes they share, including one of the funniest scenes in the film where Neeson reads the brochure of his snowplow as a bedtime story. The problem, and what keeps this from being a truly effective return to form for Neeson (aside from his questionable recollections of racially motivated crowbar wielding during the press tour for this film, something that sadly overshadows much of this film) is that this is, for all the humour rung from the deadpan grizzled grumblings and often shocking violence meted out by a vengeful grieving father, Coxman never truly changes as a character.

It feels, in real terms as though, the minute the film ends, Neeson will simply go back to snowplowing his road, unchanged by his ordeal. Indeed, despite this being a film where his wife leaves him and his son and brother die, Coxman simply marches on, impassive and single-bloody minded. Despite the crack of tenderness that appears in the stony faced Neeson towards the end of the film, there is no sense, as with many of Neeson's heroes, that anything has really changed in their lives-to have this mask crack, to show some vulnerability in more than one scene, would have added pathos and made us identify more with his quest for revenge.

The true stars of the show, and who both steal much of the show in the latter half of the film are Viking and White Bull-and, in short, in their and Coxman's narrative arcs, we see three men affected by loss as fathers. White Bull, in fact, quickly becomes the emotional centre of the film, a performance strangely at odds with the otherwise comic sensibilities of this picture, gifted a sensitivity and a nobility, and in one surprisingly affecting scene in which he is surrounded by knockoff Native American goods, a sense of a man adrift, out of time and place in the profession and trade he plies, whilst another scene, in which he watches skiers, floats between the comic and the tragic with nigh perfect timing.

As a father, his vengeance is bloody, and it is he that eventually brings the infighting between his group and Viking's to a head in the film's finale, but, unlike Neeson, there is a sense that his son's death truly affects him, drives him to a more worthy revenge than even Cold Pursuit's supposed hero. His mob family around him are an enjoyably comicly dysfunctional band, rolling up at a hotel to threaten the receptionist, only to goof off in the snow the day after-despite this, Moland grants these characters both comic and dramatic gravitas, which, unusually for a film of this type, does not merely play off the noble savage archetype that sadly tends to accompany Native American characters in cinema.

Viking, meanwhile, is perhaps the comedic centre of this film, a crazed, health freak who treats his son as a possession, despite his divorce from his wife, who swigs health shakes, and shoots people in the same scene, and whose unflinching craziness and psychopathic nature is both arresting and hilarious at the same time. His gang are an enjoyably kooky selection of misfits, from the perverted to the downright odd, whilst Viking's relationship with his wife is fraught and bleakly funny as they argue and bicker over a son that Viking is slowly moulding into his replacement. There is something almost mask like, however, about Bateman's performance, and the only moment we see this mask slip is at the loss of his son, a moment that finally spurs him into action against Coxman.

The other star of the film is undoubtedly Moland's direction, both in how this story so naturally flows between the ultra violent, the comedic, and the emotionally resonant, keeping all three in perfect balance, taking plot points that add sudden humour to the story-for example, in the fact that two of Viking's henchmen are in love with each other-and neatly twisting them, in the execution of one, and the delivery of his head by the other. In another director's hands, this film could have slid too far one way or the other, and it is hardly surprising that there is more than a touch of the Cohen Brothers to this film, albeit with a more painterly, quintessentially Scandinavian eye, and a more mainstream attitude to violence

Cold Pursuit is thus a film that is better than one expects; a bleakly funny, bloodily violent tale of revenge in which Liam Neeson finally, at least partially, breaks loose of the archetype he's been stuck in for the last fifteen years. It may not be perfect, but it's bloody good fun.

Rating: Recommended