Cold Pursuit

After being awarded "Citizen of the Year" by the fictional ski resort of Kehoe, Colorado, snowplow driver Nels Coxman's quiet life is disrupted when his son dies from a forced heroin overdose. Nels' wife Grace leaves her husband in grief. He is about to commit suicide when he learns that his son was murdered by a Denver drug cartel. He decides to seek vigilante justice, makes a sawed-off rifle, and kills three members of the cartel, dumping their bodies in a nearby river.

The cartel's psychopathic leader, drug lord Trevor "Viking" Calcote, first suspects that these deaths are the work of his rival White Bull, a Ute with whom he has so far avoided conflict. Viking has one of Bull's gangsters murdered, not knowing it is White Bull's only son. This drives White Bull to seek "a son for a son", and he orders his men to kidnap Viking's young son.

Nels seeks advice from his brother Brock, once a mob enforcer known as "Wingman", and learns about Viking. Brock tells Nels that killing Viking requires a hired assassin, and he recommends a transplanted African-American hitman known as "The Eskimo." The Eskimo agrees to kill Viking for $90,000, but decides he can get another $90,000 from Viking by informing him that "Coxman" has hired him for the hit. Viking does not appreciate the Eskimo's "lack of professional ethics" and kills him. He thinks the Eskimo meant Brock Coxman, and he takes Brock for his "last ride." Since Brock is dying of rectal cancer, he claims responsibility for the hits to protect his brother.

Viking tries in vain to stop the gang war by using one of his own men as a scapegoat and sending White Bull the man's head. This is insufficient to placate White Bull, who shoots the messenger. Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Viking's son from his prep school before White Bull's men can, in order to draw Viking into an ambush. Nels treats the boy well and protects him from the violence to come.

Nels' identity is revealed to Viking by the prep school's janitor. Though promised $10,000 for the tip, he too is killed after his disclosure.

Both gangs arrive at Nels' workplace, and most of them are killed in the ensuing shootout. Viking, attempting to drive away, is trapped when Nels uses heavy machinery to impale a shorn tree into his car, and he is shot in the chest by White Bull. He dies when found by Kehoe police detectives Kimberly Dash and Gip. As Nels leaves the property in his snowplow to continue his work, White Bull jumps into the cab, and the two men drive away together. Bull's last remaining enforcer, who had set off on a paraglide flight from the ski resort hotel where the gang stayed the night before, accidentally lands directly in the snowplow's path and is killed.

The participation of actor Liam Neeson, director Hans Petter Moland and producers Michael Shamberg and StudioCanal in making the film, originally titled Hard Powder, was announced in January 2017.[8] In March 2017, Domenick Lombardozzi, Emmy Rossum, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Laura Dern, William Forsythe, Julia Jones, and John Doman joined the cast of the film.[9][10][11][12][13][14] The next month, Aleks Paunovic joined.[15]

Principal photography began in March 2017, in Alberta, Canada. Filming also took place in Vancouver and Fernie, British Columbia.[16] While Moland had hoped to shoot in the Banff and Jasper national parks, the permit was denied by Parks Canada, which cited concerns about the film's environmental impact, and over the depiction of the First Nations gangsters led by Tom Jackson's character. Jackson provided a letter in support of the project.[17]

In November 2017, Summit Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[18] Its title was changed from Hard Powder to Cold Pursuit,[19] and it was released on February 8, 2019 in the United States,[20] and February 22 in the United Kingdom. The film's February 5, 2019, red carpet premiere was cancelled because of comments made by Neeson the previous day, regarding a past incident in his life, which many interpreted as racist.[21]

The film was released on Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital download in the United States on May 14, 2019 by Lionsgate Films. The (Region A) Blu-ray is released as a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD package.[22] Studio Canal released it in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2019.[23]

Liam Neeson was accused of racism after an interview with The Independent at a press junket for the film, published in February 2019.[35][36] Neeson explained his character's "primal" anger to the interviewer by recounting an experience he had many years ago. A woman close to him said she had been raped by a stranger, and Neeson asked what color skin the attacker had; after learning the attacker was black, Neeson said that for about a week, he "went up and down areas with a cosh ... hoping some 'black bastard' would come out of a pub and have a go" so that Neeson "could kill him". In the interview, Neeson also said he was "ashamed" to recount the experience and that it was "horrible" that he did what he did. "It's awful ... but I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, 'What the fuck are you doing?'"[37][38]

In an appearance on Good Morning America, Neeson elaborated on his experience while denying being a racist, saying the incident occurred nearly 40 years ago, that he asked for physical attributes of the rapist other than race, that he would have done the same if the rapist was "a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian", that he had purposely gone into "black areas of the city", and that he "did seek help" from a priest after coming to his senses. Neeson said that the lesson of his experience was "to open up, to talk about these things", as there was still underlying "racism and bigotry" in both the United States and Northern Ireland. The controversy Neeson's comments caused led to the cancellation of the red carpet event for the premiere of the film.[39][40][41]

• Cold Pursuit at IMDb