Cold Pursuit (2019)

I think that, at this point, Hollywood should just get it over with and release a film called Not Another Liam Neeson Movie.  Actually, this movie would have been a good candidate for that name.  Here, Neeson plays Nelson Coxman.  He’s told that his son, Kyle, died of a drug overdose.  Like most parents, Nelson and his wife, Grace, never saw any signs of addiction or use.

The funny thing is that Kyle wasn’t a user.  Nelson eventually finds someone involved with Kyle’s death.  This leads to two things happening:  Nelson kills the person and gets another name.  This leads to Nelson finding and killing the rest of the people involved, leaving Trevor 'Viking' Calcote.  Viking is the nearly untouchable leader of the local drug cartel.  Of course, that means that Viking will meet an untimely end and that Nelson will somehow be involved.

The movie is a remake directed by Hans Petter Moland, who also directed the original.  You might be forgiven for thinking that it was directed by the Coen brothers, though.  It’s not quite a comedy, but it’s not serious enough that you can take it seriously.  Every time someone dies, for instance, a title card pops up announcing it.  Add to this that many of the bad guys have nicknames like Speedo and The Eskimo.

I also noticed that Nelson murders quite a number of people, yet never gets a drop of blood on his clothing.  He gets blood on the wall of a bridal shop, but never on his clothing.  For that matter, it would seem to be very easy to get away with murder where he is.  We don’t even get one of those scenes where someone walks in on him or he’s pulled over by the police and the officer almost opens the trunk of the car.  He’s in a bridal shop and yet no one walks in on the act.  He fires several shots and no one turns a head.

There are several things I would tell a potential audience member.  First, don’t bring the kids.  I think that should be obvious by now.  Second, don’t expect too much of it.  It’s a straight-up revenge movie.  It doesn’t seem like the script tried to deviate too much from that.  Nelson only wants to kill those who killed his son.  Grace is the one to show any sign of emotion over the loss of Kyle.

I can see people liking it and I can see people not liking it.  The movie wasn’t exactly what I expected, but I was able to see it with AMC’s A-List.  I think had it not been for that, I would have waited for it to come out on DVD.

IMDb page

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

A few months ago, my mother found out about a program called Moviepass.  It allows you to watch movies, in a theater, for $9.95 per month.  It’s somewhat complicated and the details really aren’t important right now.  What’s important was that my parents and I all signed up last week.  Our first movie?  Murder on the Orient Express.  We needed something that we’d all agree on, which basically meant this or The Man Who Invented Christmas.

The movie is based on the Agatha Christie novel, as you might expect.  It starts with Hercule Poirot in Jerusalem solving a crime by proving it wasn’t any of the three main suspects.  He ends up on the Orient Express through a friend that works on the train.  It isn’t long before the train finds itself snowed in…and with a murder victim.

You’d think it would be easy.  The train is trapped between towns, making escape difficult.  It should just be a matter of figuring out who’s connected to the victim.  Well, it turns out that most of the other passengers had some connection to him.  You see, Edward Ratchett kidnapped a child who subsequently died.  If a suspect didn’t know the child, they at least knew someone who knew the child or the family.  What we get is a moderate procedural.  Poirot asks questions of the suspects and gathers clues.  At the end of the movie, he’s able to gather everyone together and work out the solution.

Having the movie on a train does make for cramped quarters.  Everyone has a room and a narrow hallway to pass each other.  This makes for the use of a few overhead shots.  There were also a few times where I noticed the use of a wide-angle lens.  (It tended to be evident as much with motion as it did with people sitting on the edge of the frame.)

The pacing seemed a little slow to me.  It’s not to say that it dragged at all, but there were times that I was wondering when the next bit of action was coming.  I don’t know that anything could have been cut.  It just seemed drawn out.  I think this has more to do with what I’m used to than anything else.  The accents tended to be more of a problem for me.  There were one or two scenes where subtitles might have helped, but it didn’t really stop me from following the movie.

I think this is one of those movies that most people will be able to judge for themselves whether or not they’ll like it.  Agatha Christie is well known, as are many of the actors.  There didn’t seem to be many surprises.  From what I’ve read, the movie follows the novel pretty closely with one or two exceptions.  I would say that if you do go to see the movie, it’s probably going to be either because you like Christie or you’re going to see it with a group, like I did.  Not being someone who’s read her work, I’d say that it’s middle of the road.  It’s enjoyable, but had it not been for Moviepass, I probably would have waited for this movie to become available on Netflix.

IMDb page