Cold Pursuit (2019)
Cold Pursuit is a 2019 action thriller film[2][5] directed by Hans Petter Moland (in his Hollywood debut) from a screenplay by Frank Baldwin. The film stars Liam Neeson, Tom Bateman, Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum, Domenick Lombardozzi, Julia Jones, John Doman, and Laura Dern. It is an official remake of the 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten), also directed by Moland, and follows a vengeful snowplow driver 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 Summit Entertainment. It grossed $76 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the action sequences and the dark humor.
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. Nels' wife Grace leaves her husband in grief. He is about to commit suicide when he learns that his son was murdered by a Denver drug 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.
The cartel's psychopathic leader, drug 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 "a son for a son", and he orders his men to kidnap Viking's young son.
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 African-American hitman known as "The Eskimo." The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for $90,000, but decides he can get another $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 he takes Brock for his "last ride." Since Brock is dying of rectal 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 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 Viking's son from his prep school before White Bull's men can, 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 $10,000 for the tip, he too is killed after his disclosure.
Both gangs arrive at Nels' workplace, and most of them are killed in the ensuing shootout. Viking, attempting to drive away, is trapped when Nels uses heavy machinery to impale a shorn tree into his car, and he is shot in the chest by White Bull. He dies when found by Kehoe police detectives Kimberly Dash and Gip. As Nels leaves the property in his snowplow to continue his work, White Bull jumps into the cab, and the two men drive away together. Bull's last remaining enforcer, who had set off on a paraglide flight from the ski resort hotel where the gang stayed the night before, accidentally lands directly in the snowplow's path and is killed.
Cold Pursuit
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