Cold Pursuit

Cold Pursuit is a 2019 action thriller film directed by Hans Petter Moland and written by Frank Baldwin. An international co-production, the film stars Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, and Laura Dern. It is a remake of the 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten), also directed by Moland, and follows a vengeful snowplow driver (Neeson) who starts killing the members of a drug cartel following the murder of his son.

The film was released in the United States on February 8, 2019, by Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment. It grossed $76 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics.

After being awarded Citizen of the Year by the ski resort of Kehoe, Colorado, snowplow driver Nels Coxman's life is disrupted when his son dies from a forced heroin overdose, murdered by a Denver drug cartel. Nels saws the barrel off a rifle, and kills three members of the cartel, Speedo, Limbo, and Santa, dumping their bodies over a nearby waterfall. Their bodies are wrapped in chicken-wire fencing. This allows fishes to eat the meat off the bones of the bodies, and the wire will keep the bones at the bottom of the stream. Nels read about this way of disposing of bodies in a crime novel. Nels's wife Grace (angry at his seemingly cold lack of grief) leaves him.

The cartel's drug lord, Trevor "Viking" Calcote, first suspects that these deaths are the work of his rival White Bull, a Ute with whom he has 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's brother Brock, once a mob enforcer known as Wingman, tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and recommends a 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 kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman and takes Brock in his car. Since Brock is dying of cancer, he claims responsibility for the hits to protect his brother. Viking tries in vain to stop the 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, Sly. Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Ryan from his prep school before White Bull's men can do so 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 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. When Viking says it will take him three 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 teaching Ryan how to drive the snow equipment, Nels meets Officers Dash and Gip on the road and says Ryan is his visiting nephew. The police then comment that they saw the cars at his place. Nels realizes Viking and his men are already on his trail and leaves with Ryan. Viking's men find out where Nels works and leave. Mustang, who has stayed behind at Nels's home and has been grieving over Dexter's senseless death, tips off the Ute that Viking was responsible for the death of White Bull's son and where he can be found. Mustang had been involved with Dexter in a gay relationship.

Nels hides Ryan in a safe place knowing that Viking and his men are coming. Nels is eventually ambushed and taken to Viking. Viking instructs them to take Nels to the garage to begin torturing him to find out where his son is but the Ute arrive. During the ensuing shootout, most of both groups are killed. Viking, attempting to drive away, is trapped when Nels uses 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 patrol officers Kimberly Dash and Gip, but with his last breath is unable to give Nels' name to the police. Dash spots Ryan driving an industrial snow blower in the direction of Kehoe, but chooses not to follow, instead calling it into dispatch. As Nels leaves 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 deaths. Avalanche, one of White Bull's men, who had gone paragliding earlier, accidentally flies into the snowplow, being minced to death and shredded to bits. His random death is the last. Through the film, after each death, a black screen shows the name of the dead man, his gang nickname, and a religious or other symbol, such as a cross, a star-of-David, or a word in Arabic. After the big shoot-out between Viking's gang and the Ute gang, the black screen is almost filled with these memorials.

The participation of actor Liam Neeson, director Hans Petter Moland and producers Michael Shamberg and StudioCanal in making the film, originally titled Hard Powder, was announced in January 2017. In March 2017, Domenick Lombardozzi, Emmy Rossum, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Laura Dern, William Forsythe, Julia Jones, and John Doman joined the cast of the film. The next month, Aleks Paunovic joined.