Cold Pursuit | 2019 | R | – 4.7.5

Why is “Cold Pursuit” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong violence, drug material, and some language including sexual references.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a couple of kissing scenes and references to sexual activity, a couple of scenes of a man wearing a towel around his waist, many violent attacks with beatings and shootings that result in death and bloody wounds, a few forced overdoses by injection, references to drug trafficking and dealing, and at least 4 F-words and several sexual references. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.”

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English-language remake of the 2014 Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance : A snowplow operator and model citizen (Liam Neeson) learns that his son has been murdered and decides to execute everyone involved. His search for the killers, fueled by fury against one drug lord (Tom Bateman) ends up igniting a bloody turf war between gangsters. Also with Laura Dern, Emmy Rossmun, William Forsythe, Julia Jones, Tom Jackson, Domenick Lombardozzi and John Doman. Directed by Hans Petter Moland. A few lines of dialogue are spoken in Ute with English subtitles and a few phrases are spoken in Thai without translation. [Running Time: 1:58]

Cold Pursuit SEX/NUDITY 4

 – A man in a hotel lies on his back on a bed wearing only a towel from waist to knees; he has said that he always does this with a 20-dollar bill folded and covering his genitals to surprise the maid, hoping for sex, and with the camera focused on his head and shoulders, we see him move his arm downward off-screen (implying that he places a 20-dollar bill where his groin would be) until three men burst into the room with drawn pistols and laugh at him (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details). A man in a bubble bath reveals one bare leg up to the upper thigh and his bare shoulders and chest. A man walks into a bedroom wearing a towel from his waist to his knees and lies on his back on a bed (his chest and abdomen). A woman gyrates in her living room window while wearing a tank top that reveals some cleavage and tight yoga pants; we hear that she once worked in a massage parlor.
► Two men hold hands and kiss for several seconds while in the front of a car. A woman sits in a man’s lap and they kiss loudly several times.
► A man asks another man, pointing to his groin, “You ever try to drive while someone is sucking your …?” A man asks a woman about an old boyfriend, “How long were you two lovers?” and she answers, “Two months.” A man calls a woman to ask to stay overnight and she makes rattling noises to sound like static and hangs up. A man announces that the surname Coxman means “A man adept at the art of fornication.” A man says that he and friends laughed at the name Coxman many times. A man tells another man that his father taught him to “try to [sexual reference deleted] every waitress who ever serves you,” and he says he will try to have sex with (using a sexual reference) a waitress today. A man says another man’s father “[sexual reference deleted] anything with a hole.”

Cold Pursuit VIOLENCE/GORE 7

 - Many violent scenes feature the deaths of men through physical beatings, strangulation, and handgun and automatic rifle shots; we see beatings that leave men's faces bloodied and dripping blood and see some shots fired at men off-screen with the camera cutting to a dead man's bloody face. A dozen men from two factions arrive at a snowplow station and a shootout ensues with pistols and automatic rifles with many bullets ricocheting off cars and we see and hear some glass break; many men are wounded and gush blood from their legs and backs, a few men receive head wounds that flow with blood and we later see a dozen bodies lying on the frozen ground.
► A messenger takes a large gift box to a man and opens it, removing a shooting victim's head with blood and gore dangling from the neck and the eyes open; the recipient pulls the messenger toward him by the necktie and shoots upward through his throat and neck (blood spurts out the back of the neck and we later see the body on the floor with the head covered by a bloody towel). A man shoots another man twice in the chest, the victim falls and we see blood on his chest as the shooter says, "Cut his head off and send it to him." A white man argues with an African-American man, telling him that people from the "hood" have no ethics; other men surround the African-American man and the scene fades as we hear three gunshots, indicating he is dead (we see a body wrapped in plastic, placed in the back of a truck and we do not see the body again). Three men burst into a hotel room, laugh at a man off-screen (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) and shoot him several times off-screen (we do not see the result but understand that he died). A man is duct-taped, put into the back of a car, and then tied to a chair where a man punches him in the face (we see him bloodied) and then he is shot in the head (blood flows); we later see the bloody body tied to a roadside sign.
► A man follows another man to an elevator in a nightclub, argues with him and beats him in the face and head until they look like bloody pulp; he drags the victim to his van and strangles him for several seconds until dead, wraps him in chicken wire and dumps him into a waterfall above a freezing river. A man confronts another man in a wedding dress store, hits him in the face with a sawed off shotgun until his face is covered in blood and his teeth are broken, throws him against a rack of dresses and shoots him dead (we see blood spray onto white dresses). A man driving a large snowplow follows a man on a snow-covered road, then cuts him off, approaches the car on foot, reaches in, and slams the driver's face and head onto the steering wheel, making a lot of blood flow; he pulls the victim out and punches him below the frame as we hear punching and squishing sounds until the men are shown lying side by side in the snow, where they laugh until one man shoots the other man in the head off-screen (blood spray covers the snow in the frame). A man uses a truck fitted with a chainsaw and crane to cut a giant tree and lift it above a car, dropping it through the middle of the front seats to pin it in place and another man shoots the driver through the open driver's window (we see blood on the victim's chest).
► A paragliding man comes too close to a large snowplow truck and is sucked into the front; the camera zooms back to show pieces of the parachute spewing out to the side like confetti as a flame burns at the front of the plow and a notice indicates the man died. Two men with guns attack a third man in the dark and we later hear the victim died; the body is placed at a café table in front of a restaurant the next day.
► A man points a pistol under another man's chin for a few seconds. A man points a handgun at another man in the street, but lowers it. A man climbs into the passenger seat of a snowplow and points a pistol at the driver, but then lays it on the dashboard. A man threatens another man that he will pull out his fingernails, cut off the fingers, and then cut off the hands (none of this occurs). A man kidnaps a young boy from his school, puts shooting earmuffs on the boy and hides him before a shootout begins and the boy escapes after the shooting stops. A man saws off a shotgun barrel and hides the gun in his jacket.
► A man with a bloody face and blood spots on his shirt approaches an older man who is sitting with a rifle barrel in his mouth, about to pull the trigger, and the younger man says drug dealers killed the older man's son, even though the victim knew nothing about some stolen drugs; the older man slams the younger man into a wall and questions him. A man kicks furniture and toys around his home and pounds on walls. A man and his ex-wife argue and both threaten legal action. A man and his ex-wife shout and he swings a fist at her, she ducks, and she punches him in the groin and then squeezes, causing him to groan and double up in pain. A man tells an aide that his young son is bullied at school and then tells the boy to hit the bully, but the boy says he will not do it because it is "stupid."
► A husband and his wife drive to a morgue where we see a man's head and shoulders with a sheet covering his body and the woman cries over him. A man standing beside a coffin shouts, "I will have blood for blood!" In a silent scene, a man shouts at the sky for several seconds. A woman wanders in deep, blowing snow wearing a long robe and socks as her husband curses and runs toward her. A Native American lights a smudge stick and wafts some smoke around the area where a dead body is found. We hear that a drug henchman looks like Santa. We see two brief funerals in the snow at a small town graveyard with attendees dressed in black. After each killing scene the victim is memorialized with a death notice on a black screen, including his name, his alias, and a symbol of his religious connection.
► During a short car chase, tires squeal and two cars miss hitting a woman, who moves out of the way and a school bus blocks one vehicle that must stop. A snowplow pushes an empty Jeep off a road and over the side of a hill. A snowplow runs over an empty vehicle. A young boy exits a snowplow garage and drives an industrial snow blower away.
► A dog defecates into a plastic bag and we see the feces. A woman spits white material onto a grave. A woman chews gum and throws it into a street. A deer missing its head and legs hangs in a walk-in refrigerator in a cabin. In a warehouse and a showroom, we see many taxidermied bison, wolves, deer and other animals.

Cold Pursuit LANGUAGE 5

 - About 3 F-words, 2 obscene hand gestures, 9 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 12 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut-up, heck, dang), name-calling (stupid, insane, crazy, clown, arrogant, criminal, snot-nosed kid, motel trick, wing ding, ringworm, Pops, Dirty Harry, Tonto, white boy, old man), 5 religious profanities (GD), 7 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, God, Jesus Christ, Jesus, Christ, The 23rd Psalm, a Ute chant for a dead relative). | profanity glossary |

Cold Pursuit SUBSTANCE USE

 - A man kills another man by injecting him with heroin in the thigh, we hear that a man was killed with an injection overdose of "smack," a man says about a murder victim three times that "He wasn't a druggie," a police officer says that all drugs should be legal and taxed, two men cut into the belly of a taxidermied deer and fill it with bricks of a white powdered drug, a man opens a briefcase to find bricks of white powder and cuts them up with a knife (he later tells another man that he disposed of the drugs), a man smokes a marijuana cigarette, a man tells a woman that his father gave him three lines of expensive cocaine every morning when he was a child, a man tells a woman that he remembers them rolling around in cocaine when they were married, and a man says he has antibiotics in the back of his SUV. Men and women in a nightclub hold drinks as they dance and one man sips from a glass of wine, two men in a home each hold a bottle of beer but do not drink, a man drinks a glass of beer in a bar, a man and a woman drink from bottles of beer at a bar, three unopened bottles of wine are seen on a kitchen counter and a carafe of whiskey is shown on a shelf, and a newspaper photo features two women holding glasses of wine. A woman smokes a cigarette in a home, a man smokes a cigarette outside beside a sign.

Cold Pursuit DISCUSSION TOPICS

 - Drug cartels, Native Americans, fathers and sons, murder, death, loss, grief, revenge, vigilantism, unexpected consequences, mental illness, legalized marijuana, cultural appropriation, misogyny, bigotry.

Cold Pursuit MESSAGE

 - Vigilante justice can cause unexpected and extreme results.