Cold Pursuit

”It’ll be a cold day in Hell when Liam Neeson does another action mov….oh, crap!”

 (2019) Action (Summit) Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Micheál Richardson, Michael Eklund, Bradley Stryker, Wesley MacInnes, Tom Bateman, Domenick Lombardozzi, Nicholas Holmes, Jim Shield, Aleks Paunovic, Glenn Ennis, Benjamin Hollingsworth, John Dornan, Emmy Rossum, Chris W. Cook, Venus Terzo, Dani Alvarado, Julia Jones, William Forsythe, Elizabeth Thai. Directed by Hans Petter Moland

 

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Liam Neeson should know; he’s made a living the last decade or two playing aggrieved fathers/husbands/friends kicking the shit out of those who have done him wrong. So it’s kind of fitting that this, what he has said will be his final action role, is set in a Colorado ski resort.

Neeson plays Nels Coxman, the snowplow driver who has recently won a citizen of the year award for the town. However, his civic acclaim hides the fact that the tiny little hamlet has a problem with crime and violence. Nels isn’t immune from it; his son Kyle (Richardson) turns up dead of a heroin overdose. Nels and his wife (Dern) are devastated, but it smells fishy to Nels. His son ever used drugs and Nels would know if he had, right? So he goes on a one man crusade to find out the truth, even if he has to kill every lowlife drug dealer and criminal in town. And there are an awful lot of them.

Moland directed this remake of his own Swedish film In Order of Disappearance from five years ago, and infuses it with an almost satirical, quirky sense of humor – each bad guy that joins the Choir Invisible gets an onscreen tombstone with his colorful gang nickname emblazoned on it. The hits keep getting harder and bloodier and while Neeson thrives with this sort of thing, here he seems oddly low-key.

The big bad is played by Tom Bateman who overacts gleefully and shamelessly. Normally a role like a drug lord named Viking would be ripe for that sort of thing, but Bateman takes it over the line into parody which is no Bueno in a film like this. Action fans will enjoy some particularly grisly deaths, but film fans will A) wonder why Laura Dern is onscreen for all of 90 seconds, and B), how does a snowplow driver turn into a lethal assassin of paranoid gang members. Well, you don’t go to an action film for logic, right?

REASONS TO SEE: Has elements of satire to it.
REASONS TO AVOID: Lackluster action film whose comic jabs don’t always hit the mark.
FAMILY VALUES: There is violence, drug content, sexual references and profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Richardson, who plays Neeson’s son, is his son in real life.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Max Go, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/26//20: Rotten Tomatoes: 69% positive reviews. Metacritic: 57/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Peppermint
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things

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Snatched (2017)

Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn get a look at the reviews.

(2017) Comedy (20^th Century Fox) Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Wanda Sykes, Joan Cusack, Randall Park, Oscar Jaenada, Tom Bateman, Christopher Meloni, Al Madrigal, Bashir Salahuddin, Arturo Castro, Raven Goodwin, Ike Barinholtz, Kate Dippold, Moani Hara, Nicholas J. Lockwood, Pedro Haro, Tom Choi, Modesto Cordero, Linda Molina, Kim Caramele. Directed by Jonathan Levine

 

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating; comedy is a highly personal thing. Everyone’s taste is different. One person’s belly laugh is another person’s meh and vice versa. We all react differently to different stimuli and what tickles our funny bones can’t necessarily be predicted. I know there are things I find funny one day that I wonder what on earth I was thinking the next. Still, there are things that we can universally agree on are not as funny as others.

Take this Mothers Day comedy. Emily Middleton (Schumer) is failing at life. Fired from her retail job, dumped by her musician boyfriend and left holding the bag on a non-refundable vacation to Ecuador – Ecuador? – she searches desperately for someone to go with on the “trip of a lifetime” (Ecuador?) but none of her friends are particularly interested in going or more to the point, interested in going with her. Judging on the behavior we observe in the first ten minutes of the film, one can scarcely blame them.

With almost no options available, she turns to her mother Linda (Hawn), an adventure-challenged cat lady of a mom who is happiest staying at home with a glass of wine and a book. One has to wonder why, particularly since Emily’s agoraphobic and passive-aggressively spoiled younger brother Jeffrey (Barinholtz) lives with mom, whom he addresses as “Ma-mah” and complains loudly if his bread isn’t warm enough. Millennials *eyeroll*!

Emily manages to convince Linda to go but it promises to be as awkward as you can imagine. Linda bundles up like a mummy by the pool and slathers Emily with enough SPF-1000 to deflect a flamethrower. Linda also shows no interest in going out partying so Emily goes by herself and is picked up by the handsome and charming James (Bateman). One simply can’t fathom what he could possibly see in her until of course it turns out his interest is strictly financial.

He arranges for Linda and Emily to be kidnapped by a ponytailed drug lord named Morgado (Jaenada) for white slavery purposes. However, the two intrepid women escape from Morgado’s essentially brain-dead  thugs and hook up with an Indiana Jones wannabe named Roger Simmons (Meloni) whose wilderness experience is limited to being the former manager at a Best Buy. With Jeffrey trying to get the U.S. Embassy to mount a rescue and the women trying to make their way back to civilization with an enraged Morgado in hot pursuit with a personal vendetta, the jungle might not be the safest place to be.

On paper, this should have worked. A strong cast led by the redoubtable Hawn who reminds us here why she was one of the greatest comediennes of her generation and a director who has some pretty quality films on his resume with a writer who co-wrote some of Melissa McCarthy’s best movies all lead to the assumption that this should have been a high quality film. Sadly, it Is not.

Hawn is one of the bright spots here although Schumer acquits herself reasonably well in a thankless role that mainly consists of the actress going from one onscreen embarrassment to the next. Schumer is one of the most talented comedic actresses working today but this feels like the character was cobbled together from dozens of other characters Schumer has played over the years. There’s nothing really original for her to sink her teeth into.

Poor Barinholtz, generally a pretty reliable character actor, gives his all to a character who you just want to punch in the throat at nearly every opportunity but the character is so inherently unlikable that you don’t care if he improves himself or not. Likewise the Emily character starts off basically as a self-involved bitch but as she spends more time with her mom becomes softer and more humble. Schumer is likable enough that even in an unlikable role we end up rooting for her but the transformation is fairly cliché.

The major sin here is that the comic set pieces – and the movie literally one set piece after another after another – are mostly unfunny. You don’t expect everything to work but you would hope at least 50% worked. That’s not the case here. Most of the gags here left me completely flat. There are some that work – and a lot of them are in the trailer – but there are fewer that work than don’t.

Hawn is really the reason to see this movie, particularly if you’re of a certain age. She’s not the Cactus Flower at this stage of her career but she still has deft comic timing and a screen persona that is both ditzy and charming. Schumer and her have a pretty comfortable chemistry that makes one wonder/hope that there might be further collaborations for the two in the future. If there is, one hopes they get better material to work with than this.

REASONS TO GO: It is wonderful to see Hawn onscreen again who remains an engaging screen personality.
REASONS TO STAY: The movie is dreadfully unfunny in places.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some brief nudity, plenty of profanity and some sexual content of the crude variety.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is Hawn’s first movie since 2002 when she made The Banger Sisters.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/13/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 35% positive reviews. Metacritic: 45/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Grandma
FINAL RATING: 6/10 (about 4 of which is Hawn)
NEXT: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword