Cold Pursuit with Liam Neeson is his latest action adventure, revenge, done someone wrong movie was on HBO. I liked his air marshal movie Non-Stop, I saw it in the theater about five years ago. Then he has a bunch of Taken movies involving his family, it seems since he turned 60 he's the action hero.
Cold Pursuit is the worse film I've ever seen him make. It's not well directed, it doesn't flow, the scenery is all cold bitter snow, worse than Fargo. It starts off with him receiving the man of the year award from his town, Kehoe, Colorado three hours west of Denver. He's a snow plow driver. Next we see two guys kidnapped and eventually killed. We soon find out that one of them is Liam's son, who was baggage handler at Denver Airport.
Liam is now on the warpath to find out who at fault. He finds a trail of local drug dealers and takes out three of them one at a time. Soon the kingpin in Denver is worried about his distribution. We soon learn that the local Kehoe town drug dealing was gifted to the Indians by the Kingpin's dad many years ago. He thinks it's the indians killing his people. Soon the Kingpin kidnaps a indian gang member, little do they know it's the chief's son. Now this means war.
Liam is also in pursuit of the kingpin. He goes to an old friend, played by the John Goodman's prison partner in Raising Arizona. Here he's a semi-crooked guy living in a big fancy house. He informs Liam who the Kingpin is and tells him, you can't kill him, you'll need to hire a hitman.
Next a black hitman comes to Liam and he pays him $90,000, 2/3 now and the rest when the job is down. The hitman goes to the kingpin and said, pay me $90,000 and I'll tell you who wants to kill you. He tells them and then they kill the hitman, he wasn't too smart.
Liam ends up kidnapping the kingpin's son from school just before the indians could do so. So the kingpin and the indians both after him with the kid, who is actually bonding with Liam since he doesn't like his dad, the kingpin.
That's basically the story in a nutshell without the ending, but you can figure that out. I gave it 4 out of 10.
I watched Cold Pursuit in the theater and felt like it was all over the place tonally. From the previews I thought it would be over the top violence with inventive kills (like Crank or the new Rambo). There was some of that but it also tried to be serious at times as well. I think it would have been better if it was just about a snowplow driver who gets in the middle of a gang war on accident and it turns out he can use his skills from living in the mountains to take everyone out. The death counts & the maid stuff didn't belong in the same movie as the grieving family and the mob son. [Reply]
Currently 50 minutes into Upgrade, and it is spectacular so far... it touches on so many different themes relevant to our times, trans humanism and the extent of big techs power over our lives chief among them
Its like a well thought out mashup of so many great movies... The Crow, Frankenstein and Jason Bourne with Hal from 2001 in a starring role
It’s destined to be a cult classic, take that to the bank [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
Anybody seen this yet?
40% from critics, 90% audience reviews on RT.
Probably going to see it tomorrow. As a Navy vet, it almost feels like a moral imperative.
It’s good. Go see it. But it’s mostly about the airmen, not as much about the ships.
I’m not good enough on the history to critique its accuracy. But it sets out to do a lot of things and does most of them well.
It’s not a Michael Bay flick. It isn’t an over simplified exercise in patriotism (there is plenty. Just not overdone). It did go out of its way to outline the Japanese story, although brief, still doesn’t run them out there as fodder on the way to victory. It also didn’t shy away from the loss.
While it did a good job of staying away from tropes, it could have used more backstory and there were a few things they spent time on that they left dangle.
One thing it does well is period stuff (at least to the extent of my knowledge). Let’s face it. The 40s were hard. Very hard. And it reflected it. Nothing was clean and shiny despite being relatively early in the war, everything was mechanical and had to be operated and it didn’t shy away from the fact that some of the shit didn’t work.
The other critical piece is it did a good job establishing the stakes and characters without beating you over the head with it for the most part.
The aerial scenes were done right. There were a few scenes in the water that the cgi was bad, but nothing horrible. As a dude that’s spent some time in an airplane (albeit never dive bombed a damn thing) the aerial scenes alone were worth the price of admission.
One thing that might cause it trouble is it tried to tell the Japanese side. They kind of touched what makes those guys tick (for anyone that doesn’t - listen to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. His latest series called Supernova in the east about the buildup of Japan is amazing). But they didn’t spend the requisite time to not make it look like they were kind of idiots. I know better but not because of the movie. I mean it tried, but understanding their position is just complicated. It also doesn’t set them up as evil invaders, which is great for me, but may not be what some patrons are expecting.
If there are any qualms at all they’re pretty minor.
- the story was pretty busy and some stuff was shallow out of necessity
- you just can’t cast Woody Harrelson in this stuff. He acted it fine he’s just too recognizable.
- a little bit of the naval cgi was wonky.
Definitely worth a watch in my book although I haven’t read any reviews. There may be some valid counterpoints that I don’t see. [Reply]
I guess the critics score vs audience score makes sense to me.
They try to do the story justice in 2 hours, which damages what would be a traditionally good story. There isn’t a telling of the story where you can follow the development of a character or include some of the complexity that makes a critically acclaimed story.
But to chase those ideals criminally damages the story as a whole. It really needs to hit the points it hit (and many more to be honest) to even do the story justice.
In my opinion it is about the event as opposed to a technically sound script. Because that’s not what happened. Shit gets slogged up in a myriad of complex events. Because that’s what war is.
To strip it down for the sake of winning critical acclaim is a mistake IMO.
This thing wasn’t flawless but I’ll take the story it told over what makes a technical masterpiece. [Reply]
Loved it. Far better than I expected. It was much better than the 70s Midway movie, whereas Bay's Pearl Harbor was far worse than Tora Tora Tora. It wasn't over the top silly, was accurate with the actual events and what led up to them. CGI effects were solid, as was the acting. All the principal characters were real people. They got the planes and the ships right. I'm fairly picky about Navy-themed movies, and while I question a few aspects, it was nothing extreme. The battle scenes were really busy, but since I've never divebombed a Japanese carrier I really can't speak to whether there was too much shit on the screen or not enough. Probably too much, though. But that's okay.
Obviously as a Navy veteran I'm the target audience here, so just by not throwing in a bunch of mindless bullshit they had me at hello. But it was just a damned good war movie.
I may go see it again. Can't remember the last movie I saw more than once at the theater. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
Loved it. Far better than I expected. It was much better than the 70s Midway movie, whereas Bay's Pearl Harbor was far worse than Tora Tora Tora. It wasn't over the top silly, was accurate with the actual events and what led up to them. CGI effects were solid, as was the acting. All the principal characters were real people. They got the planes and the ships right. I'm fairly picky about Navy-themed movies, and while I question a few aspects, it was nothing extreme. The battle scenes were really busy, but since I've never divebombed a Japanese carrier I really can't speak to whether there was too much shit on the screen or not enough. Probably too much, though. But that's okay.
Obviously as a Navy veteran I'm the target audience here, so just by not throwing in a bunch of mindless bullshit they had me at hello. But it was just a damned good war movie.
I may go see it again. Can't remember the last movie I saw more than once at the theater.
Anti aircraft ordinance is crazy. With only 24 planes to shoot at I’m guessing it was Fairly accurate. It looked to me like it didn’t sacrifice accuracy for filmmaking. But I’m by no means an expert. I could be off on that. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Buehler445:
Anti aircraft ordinance is crazy. With only 24 planes to shoot at I’m guessing it was Fairly accurate. It looked to me like it didn’t sacrifice accuracy for filmmaking. But I’m by no means an expert. I could be off on that.
I suspect the planes weren't that close together (like right on top of each other) on the bomb runs. That's the main thing. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
I suspect the planes weren't that close together (like right on top of each other) on the bomb runs. That's the main thing.
That could be. I don’t know a ton about it. [Reply]
