Finally, an answer to the question, “What if you’d given a young Quentin Tarantino 10 tons of snow, Liam Neeson and a Liam Neeson-sized budget?” “Cold Pursuit” (2019) is a quentenssential contradiction – a dark comedy in the middle of a blizzard. This bloody adaptation of a Norwegian film starts so tragically (Liam’s defending his family again, this time after the fact), I didn’t realize it was a comedy until much later. It’s as if there were two directors steering this film in opposite directions, yet still almost making it home intact. Certainly one of the most interesting efforts of 2019.
Archives for posts with tag: Quentin Tarantino
I imagine someone took a Western short story, adapted it for the 1970s as a one-act play called “Shootout at the IRA Corral,” and mailed it to Martin Scorsese with a note saying, “Betcha can’t make a movie like Tarantino!” That’s how I imagine Scorsese ended up executive producing “Free Fire,” which made the 2016 international festival circuit and then bombed at the 2017 U.S. box office. I don’t care. It’s funny. It’s got Irish guys, a cute girl, a bunch of Buscemi-like weasels running around and a dude that looks like he just stepped off the set of “Argo.”
For the first half of “The Hateful Eight” (2015) (BTW, I counted nine relatively hateful main characters, but anyway…), there is surprisingly little violence. There is, however, a scene in which bounty hunter Kurt Russell expresses concern that a duplicitous co-conspirator will get jumpy and reveal themselves. The jumpy one turns out to be Quentin Tarantino, who could no longer hold back his violent instincts and unleashes a torrent of blood that drowns what had been a downright Hitchcockian Western mystery. I’m not stupid. I know Tarantino deals in the visceral. But there’s usually a payoff. Here, not so much.
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