Cold Pursuit

Archetypal vigilante thriller conventions take a turn for the absurd when a small-town snow-plough driver sets out to avenge the death of his son in a drugs deal gone wrong. Grieving father Liam Neeson's determination to make those responsible pay, unwittingly triggers an all-out turf war between rival gangs, whose members meet their demise in an escalating series of increasingly oddball - and blackly comic - killings. A remake of director Hans Petter Moland's own 2014 Norwegian feature Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance), the lurch from serious drama focusing on Neeson and his wife Laura Dern to dark and bloody humour is a little awkward, with Dern's underwritten mourning mother disappearing entirely from the narrative as the body count begins to rise. Neeson relishes subverting tropes familiar to his earlier work in the Taken franchise, but while the grisly deaths are a lot of fun, there remains the nagging sense we're watching two separate movies clumsily bolted together.