Cold Pursuit Review: 7 Ups & 1 Down

3. It's A Rare Remake That Really Works

As far as remakes go, it certainly gave this film an advantage that the original director was convinced to return, even if scripting duties were this time undertaken by first-time scribe Frank Baldwin.

Despite Baldwin's seeming inexperience in the Hollywood game, he keeps the shell of the original film largely in tact while making a number of smart and interesting changes for the sake of English-speaking audiences (such as re-imagining a rival gang as Native Americans instead of Serbians).

You can certainly argue that this version of the story isn't quite as well-paced and a little more contrived in places, but in terms of updating material that doesn't really seem like a natural fit for the Hollywood treatment, this is very impressive for the most part.

It's incredibly rare that remakes are not merely this competent but this good, and honestly there's precious little quality difference between the two, beyond the original having a natural leg-up simply for coming first.