Glass
Two decades after he rescued a family from a home invader, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has become a vigilante. His latest case involves Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) aka 'The Horde', who has kidnapped another group of teenagers to sacrifice to his alter ego, the Beast.
After tracking Crumb down, both super-powered people are arrested by the police and placed into the care of psychologist Dr Staple (Sarah Paulson), who is determined to prove that they are suffering from a unique form of delusion.
The only variable she has not reckoned with is Elijah Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Locked away since his acts of terror in Unbreakable, the self-styled super-villain has his own plans for Dunn and Crumb...
Wow baby!
Towards the end of this movie, my mate and I started laughing uncontrollably.
This movie is a poor sequel to Unbreakable, a meh denouement to Split and a great future episode of How Did This Get Made.
This movie is fun, dull, creepy, silly, vaguely smart and completely in love with its own ridiculousness. And I still don't know howe I feel about it.
I kind of like its willingness to do its own thing, even though I don't particularly care for where it decides to go.
I was kind of into this movie for the first half, but then the movie escalates to a level of absurdity.where I had to re-adjust my expectations. I ended up wishing it did a bit more - once the climax swings into view I was surprised at how ham-fisted the comic book lore was, and how committed Shymalan was to avoiding the big climax you expect.
While the movie's ridiculousness is enjoyable to a point, it never goes far enough. Plus the flashbacks to Unbreakable kept me from truly getting onboard with the shift in tone. I'm not a fan of callbacks to other movies, particularly when the movie you are referencing is so much better than this one (here's looking at you, Spectre).
It's not as dramatically solid as Unbreakable, and does not pack Split's punch, but as a bizarre gumbo of world-building and sheer weirdness, Glass is worth a look. Especially with alcohol.
Cold Pursuit
After his son is murdered by drug dealers, small-town snowplow driver Nelson Coxman (Liam Neeson) goes on a mission of vengeance to kill the murderers and everyone they worked for.
As Nelson's vendetta progresses, his actions have ripple effects which increase the bodycount, and endanger everyone he knows.
As Nelson's vendetta progresses, his actions have ripple effects which increase the bodycount, and endanger everyone he knows.
Ah, Cold Pursuit. If certain variables were different, the narrative around this movie would be about the end of an era, namely Liam Neeson's run of 'killer geezer' action movies inaugurated by 2008's Taken. Instead, because movies do not exist seperate from their context, this movie will forever be refracted through the prism of Neeson's comments about almost committing a hate crime.
It's a shame - because this movie is really good. And if this was meant to be the finale of the Neeson 'killer geezer' meta franchise, it's near-great. A remake of Norwegian thriller In Order of Disappearance (which I have not seen), it is directed by the same filmmaker, Hans Petter Moland.
The most fully-rounded of its star’s ‘killer geezer’ flicks, Cold Pursuit is a blackly comic look at violence, and its lack of catharsis or resolution.
In a traditional action movie narrative, the underlying expectation is that order will be restored by violent means: the protagonist destroying the antagonist, expunging chaos and restoring balance to the world of the story.
In Cold Pursuit, violence does not restore equilibrium, it only creates more chaos. This is an anti-vigilante movie in which the vigilante causes more trouble than the villains.
Speaking of which, a major aspect of this movie that I really enjoyed is how much focus it places on its antagonist. While Neeson is the lead, the movie is an ensemble piece - the filmmakers have no adherence to the main character's POV, constantly shifting between major and minor characters, upending any sense that Nelson has any control over the direction of the story, or how the violence has triggered can be contained.
Speaking of which, a major aspect of this movie that I really enjoyed is how much focus it places on its antagonist. While Neeson is the lead, the movie is an ensemble piece - the filmmakers have no adherence to the main character's POV, constantly shifting between major and minor characters, upending any sense that Nelson has any control over the direction of the story, or how the violence has triggered can be contained.
Aside from Ed Harris's gang boss in Run All Night, I cannot remember any of Neeson's previous foes. Cold Pursuit actually has a villain to write home about: Viking, played by Tom Bateman, is a control freak who sees the world a certain way, and is determined to keep it that way. As he and the other characters learn, there is no way to control anything in this universe - not when there are other human beings out there with their own motivations and weaknesses.
Bateman is excellent, a raw nerve of paranoia who cannot stand how his competition, his men and - most hilariously - his ex-wife refuse to obey his 'rules'.
Other members of the cast do not fare so well - Emmy Rossum is fine as an eager deputy who wants to find out what is going on, but her role ends up feeling slightly pointless. Laura Dern gets a couple of minutes as Neeson's distraught wife, but she vanishes from the movie fairly quickly.
Moland shoots every death with an emphasis on negating audience investment - in this respect it is the anti-Taken. Deaths are shot from a distance, paced like the punchlines to jokes, or (in one moment of genuine pathos) alluded to with ellipsis. The closes the movie gets to feeling familiar is the barnstorming finale, but even then there is no real sense of rights being wronged.
While Neeson's motivation is foregrounded, the most tragic aspect of the movie is offscreen - Neeson’s rampage triggers a gang war between Viking and White Bull (Tom Jackson), an indigenous drug lord who has shared control of the drug trade with Viking's family in this corner of Colorado.
Mirroring Nelson, Viking murders White Bull's son. The broader symbolism (broken treaties, loss of future generations) is hard to miss, but the subplot with White Bull is the one narrative thread that carries a weight the movie can’t sustain.
One of the most haunting scenes in the movie is a short, silent vignette in which White Bull stares at a hotel gift shop filled with grotesque facsimiles of his people. It's a neat piece of short hand, but there's not much more to it. In the end, Nelson kills Viking, but there is no real catharsis for White Bull.
Maybe that is the point.
The movie ends with Nelson and White Bull in the snow plow, clearing the road. A repetitive but essential act, it acts as a period on the movie's underlying message: While previous movies in this cycle have been pleasingly (or not) formulaic and unpretentious, Cold Pursuit treats vengeance and violence as non-cathartic and unpredictable in its effects.
While I enjoyed watching this movie, it was impossible not to view the movie without thinking about its star's recent comments.
I am not black, but I would recommend anyone reading this review take a few minutes to read any of the responses from black people available online, and then extend that research to include the history of hate crimes perpetrated against black people just for walking down the street. Neeson’s story is not remarkable - it is terrifying.
There has been an attempt to portray Nelson’s admission as some kind of heroic act, but it distracts from the substance of the story: he spent a week trolling the streets looking to spark a fight with a black man - ANY black man - and kill him. It is purely chance that he cooled off before he hurt or killed someone.
It is sad, because this movie feels like the finale to this stage of Neeson's career, and it is disappointing that his comments will (justifiably) overshadow it.
Cold Pursuit is not as tight as it should be - the middle act starts to feel like a series of vignettes - but as black comedy about the pointlessness of violence it's pretty good.
Phew! Now that that's over, we don't have to talk about Neeson for a long time.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond called The James Bond Cocktail Hour. Every episode, we do a review of one of the books and one of the movies, picked at random.
The latest episode is out now - we review the 1987 film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
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