Movie review: Cold Pursuit goes above the typical revenge thriller with fleshed-out supporting cast

119 minutes/Opens on Feb 21/3.5 stars

The story: Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) operates a snowplow for a Colorado ski resort. His son is found dead from a drug overdose. Later, he is told that his son may have been murdered by a mob boss nicknamed Viking (Tom Bateman). Coxman takes advantage of his record as an upstanding citizen and knowledge of the mountains to take down the gang - one member at a time.

Any other time, this parade of garottings, throat slashings and falls from height would come and go from cinemas without fuss.

But because star Liam Neeson this month gave an interview in which he admitted to seeking revenge on a random black man years ago because a friend was raped, this movie is as blanketed in controversy as the snowy mountains that form much of the story's backdrop.

In a role that cannot by any means be said to be a stretch, Neeson plays a decent bloke with a set of skills that allow him to break a man's neck with not much more than a stern look.

More than once, the actor has been the personification of white man's rage in European-financed films featuring brown-skinned or Slavic villains intent on corrupting Western women. The racial subtext of his pulpier works is not the least bit subtle but here, in a welcome change, the villain Viking (British actor Bateman) is a suave member of the city's elite.

And it is not just Viking who gets a full-bodied supporting role. Almost all other characters - good and evil - are invested with personalities and drive. There is much less focus on Neeson's one-man army than in a standard revenge flick.

One reason for deviating from the bullet-bloodbath template might be that this movie is a remake of a 2014 Norwegian original. The makers made a commercially bold decision to Americanise the story without sanding away its sharp edges. Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland was brought in to helm this do-over of his original movie.

Moland has given his work a couple of flourishes from the Martin McDonagh school (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; 2017; In Bruges, 2008). For example, there is the gallows humour - fitfully sustained but still welcome - the idea of a killer and deaths which come out of the blue, without foreshadowing.

Neeson might have shown poor judgment in the interview, but his decision to take up a role here is sound. He might be once more playing a man on a rampage, but there is enough here to make this mad dad story a cut above average.