The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Just when you think Liam Neeson is going to move away from the whole “bad guys hurt kid, so dad gets revenge” thing, he takes it a step further. In his previous films, his character’s child is usually kidnapped; this time his son is killed. You really don’t want to be playing Liam Neeson’s kid in any movies.

Cold Pursuit follows snowplough driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) who, upon discovering his young son’s murder, goes on a revenge quest, making his way up a gang’s hierarchy to finally reach Viking (Tom Bateman), the man who ordered his son’s murder. With several power forces at play, Coxman might be more than just in over his head.

The film’s plot tries to be much more complicated than this, but the supposed “subplots” are scattered, irrelevant, and barely make sense. It would have been better if they had been left out of the film.

Other than the random plot-filling, the feature is basically Liam Neeson’s character killing a lot of people in a list-like manner. After every death, the person’s name pops up on the screen, which gives the killings a dry comedy effect. Dry comedy is much underappreciated but felt very misplaced in this film. This effect continued in several parts of the movie like showing a man with a parachute go into a snow plough and die quite wryly.

Some scenes in Cold Pursuit just do not make sense. Like how Coxman casually kills about a dozen people, even though he supposedly has not done anything like this before; how Coxman clumsily stands in front of a man with a gun during two gangs’ gunfight, or how a kidnapped kid blatantly tells Coxman who kidnapped him that he has Stockholm Syndrome.

For action lovers, you do get a lot of deaths and some gunfights, but compared to recent strides in action films, nothing too memorable goes on in Cold Pursuit.

For the acting, Liam Neeson is Liam Neeson, just as he was in the first, second, and third Taken films, and just as he has been in almost any movie he has ever done (except Love Actually). Neeson is cold, methodical, and systematic with his killings in every film, and that makes for good action. But just because something works doesn’t mean you have to beat it to death. Tom Bateman conveyed his deranged gang leader role with excellent body language, facial expressions, and tone. Bateman made sure audiences hate his character, and they certainly did.

The only reason to see this movie is if you are a major Liam Neeson fan and do not get sick of him picking the same role over and over again. If that is you, go right ahead.