The film was released in the United States on February 8, 2019, by Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment. It grossed $76 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Neeson and Jackson's performances, action sequences and dark humor.[10]
Plot
After being awarded Citizen of the Year by the fictional ski resort of Kehoe, Colorado, snowplow driver Nels Coxman's quiet life is disrupted when his son dies from a forced heroin overdose. He learns that his son was murdered by a Denverdrug cartel. He decides to seek vigilante justice, makes a sawed-off rifle, and kills three members of the cartel, dumping their bodies in a nearby river. Nels's wife Grace (angry at her husband's seemingly cold lack of grief) leaves him.
The cartel's psychopathicdrug lord, Trevor "Viking" Calcote, first suspects that these deaths are the work of his rival White Bull, a Ute with whom he has so far avoided conflict. Viking has one of Bull's gangsters murdered, not knowing it is White Bull's only son. This drives White Bull to seek vengeance, and he orders his men to kidnap Viking's young son Ryan in retaliation, which starts a gang war. Nels seeks advice from his brother Brock, once a mob enforcer known as Wingman, and learns about Viking. Brock tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and he recommends a transplanted hitman known as "The Eskimo". The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for Nels' US$90,000, but decides he can get another US$90,000 from Viking by informing him that Coxman has hired him for the hit.
Viking does not appreciate the Eskimo's "lack of professional ethics" and subsequently kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman, and he takes Brock in his car. Since Brock is dying of colorectal cancer, he claims responsibility for the hits to protect his brother. Viking tries in vain to stop the gang war by using one of his own men (Dexter) as a scapegoat and sending White Bull the man's head. This is insufficient to placate White Bull, who shoots the messenger. Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Ryan from his prep school before White Bull's men can do so, in order to draw Viking into an ambush. Nels treats the boy well and protects him from the violence to come. Nels' identity is revealed to Viking by the prep school's janitor. Though promised US$10,000 for the tip, he too is killed after his disclosure.
Nels calls Viking and tells him to come to his house alone, and when Viking says it will take him 3 hours, Nels takes Ryan with him to work. While Viking was lying, as he already knew Nels' address and was minutes away, he finds the house empty; his men toss the place to find clues about the kidnapper. While Nels teaches Ryan how to drive the snow equipment, Viking's men find out where Nels works and heads out. Mustang, silently grieving over Dexter's senseless death, tips off the Ute.
Both parties arrive at the company site, and most of them are killed in the ensuing shootout. Viking, attempting to drive away, is trapped when Nels uses heavy machinery to impale Viking's car with a shorn tree trunk, allowing White Bull to shoot Viking in the chest. He dies when found by Kehoe police detectives Kimberly Dash and Gip. Detective Dash spots Ryan driving an industrial snow blower in the direction of Kehoe, but Dash elects not to follow. As Nels leaves the property in his snowplow to continue his work, White Bull jumps into the cab; after initially holding Nels at gunpoint, the two men drive away together with both being satisfied for having avenged their respective children's death. The scene ends after Avalanche accidentally flies into the snowplow, being minced to death and shredded to bits.
In November 2017, Lionsgate acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[22] Its title was changed from Hard Powder to Cold Pursuit,[23] and it was released on February 8, 2019 in the United States,[24] and February 22 in the United Kingdom. The film's February 5, 2019, red carpet premiere was cancelled because of comments made by Neeson the previous day, regarding a past incident in his life, which some interpreted as racist.[25]
The film was released on Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital download in the United States on May 14, 2019 by Lionsgate Films. The (Region A) Blu-ray is released as a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD package.[26]Studio Canal released it in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2019.[27]
Reception
Box office
Cold Pursuit grossed $32.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $44.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $76.2 million, against a production budget of $60 million.[2]
In the United States and Canada, Cold Pursuit was released alongside What Men Want, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part and The Prodigy, and was projected to gross $7–10 million from 2,630 theaters in its opening weekend.[28] It made $3.6 million on its first day, including $540,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $11 million, finishing third, behind The Lego Movie 2 and What Men Want.[29][30] In its second weekend the film fell 45% to $6 million, finishing sixth,[31] and then $3.3 million in its third weekend, finishing eighth.[32]
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 68% based on 186 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Cold Pursuit delivers the action audiences expect from a Liam Neeson thriller -- along with humor and a sophisticated streak that make this an uncommonly effective remake."[33] It was also included in the site's list of the best action films of 2019.[34] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[35] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 3 out of 5 stars and a 42% "definite recommend".[30][36]
Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, delivered a positive review, grading it a "B+":
If [Cold Pursuit] sounds like murder-by-numbers Liam Neeson Mad Libs, well, it kind of is. But what sets Cold Pursuit apart from its predecessors is its tone. It has the jokey, self-amused vibe of an Elmore Leonard novel or one of those arch, wannabe Tarantino knock-offs that sprouted up like toadstools in the wake of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and were quickly forgotten. It knows exactly what kind of movie it is, but that doesn't stand in the way of it goosing its bloodbath set pieces with irreverent, off-kilter gallows humor.[37]
As characters with nicknames such as Sly and Mustang and Smoke and War Dog and Shiv and Drayno enter and often quickly exit the picture, Cold Pursuit moves forward with the assured and deliberate force of Nels' massive snowplow. And with Neeson/Nels at the wheel, Cold Pursuit is one fantastically hot mess of a movie.[38]
Liam Neeson was accused of racism after an interview with The Independent at a press junket for the film, published in February 2019.[39][40] Neeson explained his character's "primal" anger to the interviewer by recounting an experience he had many years ago. A woman close to him said she had been raped by a stranger, and Neeson asked what color skin the attacker had; after learning the attacker was black, Neeson said that for about a week, he "went up and down areas with a cosh ... hoping some 'black bastard' would come out of a pub and have a go" so that Neeson "could kill him". In the interview, Neeson also said he was "ashamed" to recount the experience and that it was "horrible" that he did what he did. "It's awful ... but I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, 'What the fuck are you doing?'"[41][42]
In an appearance on Good Morning America, Neeson elaborated on his experience while denying being a racist, saying the incident occurred nearly 40 years ago, that he asked for physical attributes of the rapist other than race, that he would have done the same if the rapist was "a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian", that he had purposely gone into "black areas of the city", and that he "did seek help" from a priest after coming to his senses. Neeson said that the lesson of his experience was "to open up, to talk about these things", as there was still underlying "racism and bigotry" in both the United States and Northern Ireland. The controversy of Neeson's comments led to the cancellation of the red carpet event for the premiere of the film.[43][44][45]
^"Cold Pursuit". Lionsgate. Archived from the original on September 6, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2020. Cold Pursuit, an action thriller infused with irreverent humor, stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a family man whose quiet life with his wife (Laura Dern) is upended following the mysterious death of their son.
^"'Cold Pursuit' Ending Explained: Does Nels Get His Revenge?". Collider. Retrieved November 5, 2023. Neeson's performance in the 2019 action thriller Cold Pursuit ended up being an outlier in his action resume, thanks to its morbid sense of humor and more extreme ultra violence.
