Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Michael Richardson, Michael Eklund, Bradley Stryker, Wesley MacInnes, Tom Bateman, Domenick Lombardozzi, Nicholas Holmes, Jim Shield, Aleks Paunovic, Benjamin Hollingsworth, John Doman, Emmy Rossum, Dani Alvarado, Julia Jones, Michael Adamthwaite, William Forsythe, Elizabeth Thai, David O’ Hara, Gus Halper, Kyle Nobess, Raoul Trujillo, Nathaniel Arcand, Glen Gould, Mitchell Saddleback, Christopher Logan, Tom Jackson, Arnold Pinnock.

Just how far do you go with revenge, what point does it serve when it goes beyond the one who took love and meaning from your heart, who destroyed all that you lived for, revenge only sires bloodlust, revenge is the father of constant reprisal, tit for tat existence in which nobody wins and the whole world burns; Hell after all is not warm, Hell is a cold place here on Earth and the burning is that of punishment.

A lot has been said about Liam Neeson in recent times, a frank discussion about the nature of revenge played out with an honest and bitter reflection, one which has divided fans and the public at large; what was missed out though through the rightful conversation about race, was that of how revenge corrupts the living, that by chasing the desire to punish those who stole from you, you end up corroding your soul, one death becomes two, two becomes several, and then in the words of Josef Stalin, all in the end becomes statistics.

To separate art from fact is one of the points of cinema and in Cold Pursuit, it is the employment of dark comedy which makes this an untypical film about vengeance. The stereotypical mass produced cinematic fare that has had Liam Neeson’s name attached to them over the years is given a slightly less grim face in this particular film, interweaved with the serious is the graphic account of cynical laughter, of humour derived from the strangely alluring accounts of death and the matter of fact way in which each person encountered has their own grave to carry with them.

Whilst it could be argued that Liam Neeson’s time on screen has been dominated by such films, perhaps never really living up to his greatest work in the television adaption of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance more than 30 years ago, it has to be acknowledged that when he strikes the right tone it does lighten the screen up accordingly.

With powerful, if short lived, performances by David O’ Hara, Tom Jackson and Tom Bateman, Cold Pursuit warms the screen up suitably, a more than average offering in which the overused practice of revenge is given a timely different direction in which to search for answers.

Ian D. Hall