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COLD PURSUIT

Grade: B+

As a general rule, when European directors do English-language remakes of their home-grown successes, the result is pretty dismal; perhaps the most egregious example is “The Vanishing,” Dutch director George Sluizer’s chilling 1988 tale of a man’s obsessive search for his missing girlfriend that he turned into a laughably inept Hollywood bomb five years later. Happily Norwegian helmer Hans Petter Moland breaks the pattern with this reworking of his 2014 movie “Kraftidioten” (released here as “In Order of Disappearance”). “Cold Pursuit” is every bit as good as, and in some ways superior to, the original.

That’s not only because Moland’s skill hasn’t deserted him in the move from Norway to Alberta (where the film was shot), and because it provides a solid vehicle for Liam Neeson to tweak his stern action-hero persona to good effect, but because neophyte screenwriter Frank Baldwin, adapting Kim Fupz Aakeson’s script, has found clever solutions to the problems posed by the geographical change in the plot, and has retained—even amplified—the mordant humor that permeated the first film. The result is a genuine surprise, in the best sense.

The picture is basically a revenge story in the vein of the “Death Wish” formula, the targets in this case being the drug dealers that Neeson’s Nels Coxman blames for the death of his son Kyle (Micheál Richardson). Nels is the reliable snow plow driver in small-town Kehoe, Colorado, which has long depended on him to keep the major arteries open in the worst blizzards. Kyle worked as a baggage loader at the Denver airport, and is kidnapped and killed by a scurvy type named Speedo (Michael Eklund), who makes the death look like a heroin overdose—a conclusion the cops quickly accept despite Nels’ insistence that the boy was not an addict.

Kyle’s death creates a rupture in Nels’ relationship with his wife Grace (Laura Dern), who soon leaves him. In his grief Nels is prepared to commit suicide until Dante (Wesley MacInnes) arrives, beaten up, to tell him that Kyle was murdered as a result of a smuggling operation gone wrong. He also reveals that Speedo was the killer.

Nels takes it upon himself to track down Speedo and take his vengeance—but not before extracting the name of Speedo’s immediate boss in the operation—a bridal-gown shop owner called Limbo (Bradley Stryker), who becomes his next victim. Before Limbo breathes his last, Nels gets another name—of a big guy nicknamed Santa (Michael Adamthwaite), whom he intercepts with a briefcase full of cocaine. He kills the guy and disposes of the drugs.

By this time Nels’ work has grabbed the attention of the dead men’s cartel chief, a preening Denver yuppie called Viking (Tom Bateman), who assumes that the disappearances are the work of Native American cartel boss White Bull (Tom Jackson), with whom he’s long had a tense agreement to respect each other’s territory. (In the original the opposing cartel was Serbian, and the change Baldwin’s contrived here provides ample opportunity for witty cultural observations.) When Viking recklessly orders a hit to retaliate, the victim turns out to be White Bull’s own son, and the act sets off a turf war that will eventually endanger Viking’s precocious, sensitive son Ryan (Nicholas Holmes), over whom Viking–who offers the boy “Lord of the Flies” as a teaching tool of conduct–and his ex-wife (Julia Jones) are constantly fighting, and bring both gangs to Kehoe for a showdown.

Nels, meanwhile, continues his vendetta, enlisting his ex-gangland brother Brock (William Forsythe) to provide inside advice that leads him to hire a hit-man called The Eskimo (Arnold Pinnock) to take out Viking. Nibbling around the edges of everything that’s happening is eager Kehoe policewoman Kim Dash (Emily Rossum), whose banter with her older, cynical partner Gip Gipsky (John Doman) provides a streak of puckish humor that contrasts with the periodic bursts of violence and script’s darker jokes that begin with a slow-moving machine at the Denver morgue and continue through a final ghoulish gag involving a paragliding accident initiated when White Bull and his crew show up at the Kehoe ski lodge—and include adding little crosses with the appropriate names each time another corpse is added to the enormous body count. The bit even continues into the cast listing in the closing credits, which hearkens back to the American title of the Norwegian original.

Moland handles most of the film with exceptional skill. True, the exteriors often look more Nordic than Coloradan, but Philip Øgaard’s cinematography is superb, and while the final confrontation between the two gang cartels isn’t terribly well choreographed, editor Nicolaj Monberg generally keeps the convoluted plot twists comprehensible (including a subplot involving Viking’s lieutenant Mustang, played by Domenick Lombardozzi, that explains why White Bull and his gang show u to do battle with Viking’s crew when they do). Jorgen Stangebye Larsen’s production design is also estimable (Viking’s and Brock’s modernist houses, Nels’ rustic one, the Kehoe ski lodge interior and the antique warehouse White Bull uses as a headquarters are especially impressive), and George Fenton’s score, which mixes sternness with almost jocular lightness, is refreshingly different.

The picture also offers strong acting, beginning with Neeson, who brings his customary toughness to Nels, without having to resort to the super-he-man poses of most of his action vehicles. But Moland secures excellent turns from all of his crowded cast, from Bateman and Jackson, who offer contrasting portraits of crime kingpins (the former as over-the-top as Jimmy Cagney in “White Heat,” the latter as laid-back as Chief Dan George) and the various members of their respective crews, through Rossum and Doman (who ably bounce Berman’s snappy lines back and forth) and even young Holmes (who makes Ryan one of the most likable tykes to appear onscreen in a while).

In short, this is a Liam Neeson vehicle unlike most of those that have made him a later-in-life action star: it’s much more like “A Walk Among the Tombstones” than “Taken,” and all the better for it. “Cold Pursuit” is a worthy English adaptation of its cunning Norwegian source, both exciting and morbidly funny, often simultaneously. If you enjoyed “Hell or High Water,” give it a shot.

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WHITNEY

B+

Tragic deaths are hardly rare in the music business, but Whitney Houston’s fall from pop superstardom to a sad end in a hotel bathtub in 2012 is one of the most notorious, and most poignant. Her passing is naturally the culminating event in Kevin Macdonald’s excellent documentary, but while not ignoring the circumstances leading to her death—and offering some startling observations about her emotional and physical health—it provides an insightful view of her entire life and career, as well as the social context surrounding and affecting them.

In many respects Macdonald’s film is ordinary, in terms of its formal conventionality. It assembles excerpts from interviews and mingles them with archival footage and stills to provide an outline and analysis of Houston’s life. What’s extraordinary is the range of those interviewed—from her mother, brothers and other relatives, as well as her husband Bobby Brown, through business colleagues (even Kevin Costner, who remarks on co-starring with her in “The Bodyguard”). But the result is no watered-down authorized biography. The interviews elicit revealing observations and admissions, and even those occasions when someone says something incredible—as when Brown simply denies that drug use had anything to do with her death—the comment is telling.

And Macdonald is uncompromising in depicting the difficult familial circumstances that had such a great impact on Houston. Hers was a broken family not only because her parents divorced but in other ways. Her mother Cissy, a successful singer herself, recognized her daughter’s talent early on and taught her well, but was also absent so much that she left much of the work of raising her to others, and then sent her to a demanding Catholic school. Her father John, a powerful New Jersey state official, was a notorious womanizer, but was infuriated when Cissy had an affair with the minister her daughter revered. Whitney placed her brothers in jobs with her retinue after her pop success, but they were hardly good influences, among other things encouraging her increasingly harmful drug habit.

Her family, moreover, was hardly supportive of Houston’s relationship with Robyn Crawford, a high school friend who became her roommate when she left her family at 18. Crawford not only served as her aide and confidant but—much to the family’s displeasure—was also her lover, something that would lead to some very nasty press coverage (and, ultimately, Crawford’s departure). Equally unpleasant was the allegation from some African-American leaders—including Al Sharpton—that she wasn’t “black” enough. Under such circumstances it was perhaps psychologically understandable that she should have married Brown as a means of dealing with both issues—a marriage that ultimately proved disastrous to her wellbeing, particularly since his star fell as hers ascended.

“Whitney” doesn’t ignore the artistic side. It shows her amazing early talent and her astronomical success with Clive Davis’ Arista Records. It gives one a taste of her live performances and the overwhelming popularity of “I Will Always Love You,” not only in America but throughout the world, and admiringly recalls her rendition of the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl, which had a unifying patriotic effect at an important moment in U.S. history, during the first Gulf War.

But the emphasis is on Houston’s personal life, and the decline that was epitomized by a catastrophic “comeback” tour, which some of the people involved describe in truly horrific terms. The situation was exacerbated once more by family problems: she had appointed her father as her manager, but fired him after he was accused of skimming funds, and he responded by filing suit against her for $100,000,000. They never reconciled. And the scorn with which she was treated by the media—a few examples are included, like a clip from “American Dad”—was only amplified by a misguided interview Houston herself gave to Diane Sawyer.

There are obviously many villains in the Houston story, but the film withholds one until a late-minute revelation. Ultimately, Macdonald argues, the real crux of the tragedy lay in Houston’s inability to come to terms with the person she really was, and he traces that to childhood molestation by a person whom her assistant Mary Jones explicitly names, citing Whitney herself as the source. To find out that person’s identity, see the film.

That’s hardly the only reason to watch “Whitney,” however. Macdonald recognizes the complexity that marked both her rise and her fall, and, aided by editor Sam Rice-Edwards, who has blended the archival material and Nelson Hume’s newly-shot footage with a supple touch, conveys the tragedy of her life with intelligence and skill.