2/5 stars

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Director Hans Petter Moland, who based the film on his 2014 Norwegian movie In Order of Disappearance, tries to replicate the ironic tone and deadpan delivery of Coen Brothers films like Blood Simple and Fargo, with some Tarantino-inspired mayhem thrown in. But the result is more often childish than witty.

Cold Pursuit was adapted from the earlier film by American screenwriter Frank Baldwin, and it follows the original story very closely. Neeson plays Coxman (a pun that reflects the hero’s name “Dickman” in the original), a snowplough driver in freezing Colorado whose son is mistakenly killed by a gang of drug runners.

Taking justice into his own hands, Coxman kills his way up the gang’s chain of command until he reaches the slick and arrogant boss Viking (Tom Bateman). But neither side has stopped to consider a group of Native American gangsters who have their own grudge to settle with Viking. Murder and mayhem ensue, and each killing is marked with a symbol which flashes on the screen to denote the deceased’s ethnicity.

Cold Pursuit starts out as a standard vigilante film replete with unappealing violence, and the humour only shows up when Viking enters the fray. Even after that, there’s a noticeable mismatch, with Neeson playing it for real and cold-heartedly dispensing with villains in his typical ice-cool manner, and Bateman gunning for laughs which never fully materialise.

The attempts at cheery Pulp Fiction-style chats and situations aren’t bad, but serve to date the film – it all feels very 1990s compared with today’s vicious crime films. Big holes in the plot do not help, either. Why does Coxman never tell the police of his son’s murder, and why does his wife (played briefly, but well, by Laura Dern) disappear after 15 minutes?

Viewers will probably find the film’s racial stereotyping appalling. Ahn (Elizabeth Thai), the only Asian character with any lines, is a crudely stereotypical mail-order wife who cannot speak English properly, is rude and controlling, slutty, and – for no apparent reason – spits on her Caucasian husband’s grave after he is murdered. A character from India is also humiliated gratuitously.