Cold Pursuit (2019)

With variable returns beginning from Taken, the indisputably finest of the genre, Liam Neeson has become Hollywood’s go-to for grizzled revenge thrillers. While Cold Pursuit has been marketed as the next high-concept riff on an old classic – Liam Neeson kills people with a snowplow, the posters promise – the end result is something closer to Fargo than Taken, more dark comedy than dark night of the soul, though Neeson seems not to know it.

Neeson stars as Nels Coxman, snowplow driver and citizen of the year in Kehoe, Colorado. When his son turns up dead of a heroin overdose, Nels senses a darker truth and sets out for revenge on the drug dealers who killed his boy, working his way to the Viking (Tom Bateman) at the top of the distribution ladder.

In my journey toward avoiding trailers altogether (I’ve worked my way up to ignoring the “final trailers,” often riddled with spoilers), I admit I never saw a promo for Cold Pursuit and only knew of its existence because of early posters that showed Liam Neeson dragging a body past a snowplow. “I’m in,” I said confidently, but now that I’ve come out of the theater, I’m not exactly sure what I had gotten into in the first place. Cold Pursuit is an odd movie with a meticulously tuned sense of what is funny, what is conventional, and what constitutes finality. “What the hell was that movie?” I asked when the credits rolled, and I genuinely don’t know what to make of it. I enjoyed it, certainly, and got a fair dose of thrills from Neeson’s ability to turn mundane vengeance into Shakespearean violence. But at the same time I felt myself being recalibrated over the course of the movie, aghast at an early gag about morgue equipment but gradually realizing that the whole film finds humor in offbeat interruptions, as in a gag of magnifying returns where the names of the deceased appear as title cards. 

The film continues a surprising number of subplots, many of which overwhelm Neeson’s by the end of the film, and it’s in these side stories that the film stretches its dark comedic wings. When the film’s focus is on Nels Coxman and his drive for revenge, it’s a mostly straight action thriller; Liam finds a baddie, interrogates him with varying degrees of roughness, and executes him with brutal precision. Elsewhere in the film, though, mobsters struggle with fantasy football drafts, quarrel over who’s on body disposal duty, and take to the ski slopes because they were “born to fly.” One senses that Neeson was starring in one film – and perhaps the finest joke of all is that he is deadly serious in ways the rest of the film steadfastly refuses to be, that Neeson persisted in Taken form when the film called for Fargo. 

Cold Pursuit is director Hans Petter Moland’s American debut, remaking his Norwegian film, and perhaps the Scandinavian sensibility that gave us The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (famously marketed as the “feel-bad Christmas movie” for American audiences) is to blame for this mad experiment in tonal shifts. It’s certainly not conventional American fare and can catch a moviegoer off-guard if they, like yours truly, enter a theater unaware. And yet, as a moviegoer increasingly aware of his own idiosyncratic sensibilities, there is something undeniably appealing about a director throwing caution to the wind and making a film that only he could have made. One could imagine a version of this film from the Taken crowd that would have been exactly what I expected, for better or for worse. So in that sense, Cold Pursuit earns my respect for giving me something I didn’t expect but ended up liking all the same.

Cold Pursuit is rated R for “strong violence, drug material, and some language including sexual references.” Directed by Hans Petter Moland. Written by Frank Baldwin. Based on the film Kraftidioten by Hans Petter Moland. Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, William Forsythe, Domenick Lombardozzi, John Doman, and Tom Jackson.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

No one, it seems, hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans. To be fair, we’ve been wronged by the franchise we profess to love – the much-maligned Prequel Trilogies are cumbersome and inelegant, and the less said about the “Holiday Special” the better – but I think by and large the fanbase has been spoiled by a profusion of content and thus has developed a very narrow view of what Star Wars ought to be. The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in a franchise that now also includes “Anthology Films,” flies in the face of that narrow vision of Star Wars and does something truly unique with the franchise while remaining (to borrow a phrase from its composer, John Williams) quintessentially Star Wars-ian.

(As ever, you can trust me to give you the spoiler-free treatment. Believe me when I tell you that the plot summary below is only half of the first act, but if you haven’t seen it and want to go in totally unspoiled, skip down to the last paragraph, and don’t listen to the soundtrack, because Williams is not shy about quoting identifiable cues.)

The Force having awakened in the previous film, The Last Jedi picks up moments later, as Rey (Daisy Ridley) encounters Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in his self-imposed, grimly pessimistic exile. While Rey implores Luke to rejoin the galaxy and teach her the ways of the Force, Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) leads the Resistance in evacuating their D’Qar base; Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) butts heads with Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern); and defector Finn (John Boyega) joins up with mechanic Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) to seek out a way to keep the First Order off their tail. And speaking of the film’s villains, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is dispatched by the Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) to snuff out the Resistance, the Jedi Order, and his own demons.

The Last Jedi covers a lot of ground, and it’s been rightly compared to The Empire Strikes Back for its divergent plot structure. Where The Force Awakens was relentlessly linear and unilaterally focused on a tight narrative, The Last Jedi sprawls out on this galactic tapestry and gives us no shortage of plots to follow. Like in Empire, the plots splinter off and converge in unexpected ways, and the audience is never quite sure what’s going to happen. I’ve seen a lot of outlets that report the film doesn’t “play it safe” and “takes risks” with the franchise – there is a moment, about halfway through the film, at which point I realized I had no idea what was going to happen because something I’d taken for granted had changed completely. After that, I found myself trying to keep up with the film as it heroically outpaced my expectations. As we galloped into the third act, I found myself quite literally gasping for air; I’d forgotten to breathe, and it took an unexpected shock to jar me back to life.

There’s not a bad performance in the bunch, and to say more might encroach on the territory of spoilers. Daisy Ridley gives a fantastically driven performance as a woman who is finally running toward her destiny, while Adam Driver is magnetic as he wrestles with the legacies he’s being forced to inherit. Far and away, the film belongs to Mark Hamill, who’s given a meaty character arc once Rey holds out that lightsaber on the island of Ahch-To, but Carrie Fisher gives a hell of a swan song as General Leia, who looms over the film like the regal war hero we know her to be. Then there’s the trio of new faces, of whom Kelly Marie Tran is the most engaging and likely a new fan favorite as she presents a giddy new look at what it means to be a hero of the Resistance from the vantage point of the mechanic Rose Tico; Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro turn in compelling performances, too, and all three of them are examples of what Star Wars has done best – introduce us to slices of a character’s life and invite us to study further into that galaxy far, far away. For The Last Jedi is, like all of the Star Wars universe, a story about the personal stakes of good and evil, about a series of individual choices that add up to galactic mythology because every life is precious, every moment sacred, every interaction blessed by significance because each life exists in its own expanded universe of stories. (Rose has her own tie-in book; Holdo appears in an earlier novel about Leia; and del Toro’s DJ has his own comic book coming soon – crass consumerism it may be, but sign me up for the lot of it.)

By way of critique, I’ll say that there are a few moments in the movie that don’t quite feel like Star Wars to me – new abilities we see on display, new technologies, even incidental characters who feel as if they’ve been imported from another franchise. Where some have taken this with resentment, #NotMyStarWars, I’m in the camp where those plot devices feel like fresh angles on a franchise that had already recapped its greatest hits with The Force Awakens and, to an extent, Rogue One. The tone of the film does, however, occasionally flirt with the line between deflating comedy and moments of high drama; where Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 tripped headlong over its own shoes into a pratfall in its best effort to prevent us from engaging with an emotion beyond laughter, The Last Jedi uses these moments to show us that a person is never only one thing. Someone mired in the deepest depression can find an opportunity for levity; life-or-death stakes end up blinking when they stare us down and we shrug our shoulders as if to say, “Do your worst.”

Surprisingly, I didn’t cry at this one. I still get a little choked up at the reunion of Han and Leia in The Force Awakens – kudos to John Williams, who did nonpareil work there and who continues to live up to his own legend. (Thank goodness, by the way, the “Canto Bight” theme is on the soundtrack!) I did, however, feel a swell of admiration at a film that managed to defy my expectations and yet make a perfect amount of sense. There may have been a few things I would have done ever so slightly differently, but of what movie isn’t that true? At film’s end, I felt thrilled, breathless, captivated. Though it’s the longest entry in the franchise, I could have easily done another hour. We’ve got two years until the as-yet-untitled Episode IX, but director Rian Johnson has given us a lot to pore over, and I can’t wait to see it again. Moreover, my excitement for the future of the franchise is stratospheric, because this all could have gone horribly wrong. The galaxy is in good hands, and there’s room for hope.

The Last Jedi is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action and violence.” Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, and Benicio del Toro.

The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

The Fault in Our Stars is the latest film adaptation of a wildly popular young adult novel, and while that all may sound tiresome, Josh Boone’s adaptation of John Green’s text thankfully departs from what you’re expecting both by avoiding the impulse to franchise and by crafting itself eloquently and movingly.

Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), whose thyroid cancer has settled into her lungs, falls in love with fellow support group attendee Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a one-legged survivor of osteosarcoma.  The two fall in love “the way you fall asleep – slowly, then all at once” and bond over Hazel’s favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction.  Soon, they travel with Hazel’s mother (Laura Dern) to Amsterdam to meet the author, Peter van Houten (Willem Dafoe).

What most people will have heard about the film is that it is an unabashed tearjerker.  It is, in fact, the weepiest film since About Time.  The target audience is, apparently, young adults, but don’t be deceived by where the publishing house had slotted the book; the filmmakers are emotional snipers who take aim at the heartstrings of anyone in the audience.  And based on the screening I saw, I suspect that this is one of those “not a dry eye in the house” films.

The Fault in Our Stars is a film about teenagers with cancer, and in a sense a teary audience is a bit like fish in a barrel.  What sets Fault apart from the Lifetime movie-of-the-week version of this story is that the emotions the film engenders really do feel earned.  This is something to which I’ve given a lot of thought – why does a film like this work so well when we’re (or at least, I am) immediately aware that we’re about to be manipulated emotionally?  Part of this, I think, has to do with the way the film frames itself; Hazel tells us repeatedly that hers is the only accurate story about cancer (An Imperial Affliction aside), which sets us on her side quite instantaneously, especially because the entire film is told from her perspective.

The bigger reason that Fault works, ultimately, is that it’s very well told.  Rather than rely on the “kids with cancer” crutch, Boone gives us a pair of very engaging star-crossed lovers in Woodley and Elgort.  Woodley’s gotten a fair bit of press for headlining the Divergent series (though critics seemed less enamored of it), but I do hope that this right here is a star-making performance (gosh, how many “star” puns can I come up with?) because Woodley is for a book reader a definitive Hazel Grace.  She captures all the snarky charm Green gave her, but she’s able to switch on the audience’s waterworks with a well-placed choke in her voice.

To be honest, I did have my reservations about Elgort.  I’d never seen him before, and Augustus Waters is a very difficult character to get just right.  His dialogue can come off as stilted, though this is entirely the point, but Elgort sells lines like “I reject that out of hand” by giving us an Augustus perfectly in line with Hazel’s assessment of him at a picnic near the film’s end.  He’s charming, and the audience falls in love with him when Hazel does.

The nice treat in the film is Willem Dafoe’s turn as the disaffected writer for whom Hazel and Augustus share a fondness.  (He’s also a welcome inclusion for parents or significant others who feel dragged to the film, but that’s neither here nor there.)  Now, Hazel and Augustus travel halfway across the world to meet him in what feels very much like the center of the film, though it’s a scene that doesn’t behave exactly like you would expect.  I’ll try not to spoil things – though I suspect that the kind of people who care about spoilers have already read the book – but putting this scene squarely in the middle of the narrative tells us something important about what I think Green’s endgame is.  Ultimately, I think the film speaks to Louis CK’s line about death; he says, “Lots of things happen after you die—they just don’t involve you.”  Van Houten is one of those things; Laura Dern’s role as the mother is another.  Now, again, this isn’t spoiling anything, but the film is such a heavy meditation on death (“oblivion is inevitable”) that I think it offers something equally poignant about what is left behind – about living in the face of death.

The obvious counter to the threat of death is the promise of memory, and the film is able to end optimistically because of that note.  I think that audiences too will remember this film in a way that we don’t necessarily remember bigger, bloatier franchised young-adult books-to-films like Twilight or The Hunger Games.  Self-contained and infinitely compassionate, The Fault in Our Stars is a fine change of pace from the big blockbuster films of the summer, so pack a tissue or two.

Okay?

The Fault in Our Stars is rated PG-13 for “thematic elements, some sexuality and brief strong language.”  As a movie about teens with cancer, the feels are at eleven, and these “thematic elements” will make you cry.  There’s heavy contemplation about death and the scars cancer leaves behind; the film has a very cheer-worthy F-bomb.  There are two make-out scenes, one played for laughs and the other a very intimate encounter in which clothing is removed but nothing is exposed.