Nils Dickman (Stellan Skarsgard) has just been awarded citizen of the year following his continued efforts at keeping the roads clear with his snow plough. Unfortunately his son, involved with local drug dealers, is murdered for stealing. Nils sets out to work his way up the food chain to the man in charge and get his revenge.

I recently reviewed Cold Pursuit, the American remake of this Norwegian film and was intrigued enough to check the original out via Amazon Prime. The most intriguing aspect of this remake is that director Hans Petter Moland is responsible for both films and within the opening 10 minutes what stunned me was how the film was virtually identical, both in terms of script but even down to the shots. In fact, over the course of the entire film I could not get out of my head the comparison between Michael Mann’s L.A. Takedown and Heat. The difference being that Moland is clearly so happy with his original work that he felt his task was just to transplant the plot from Norway to the U.S. and get a slightly bigger star in the lead role.

There are some minor amendments to the plot, the main characters name switches from Dickman to Coxman and the rival drug gang from Serbians to Native Americans. The largest change being a slightly expanded role for the small town cops following the unraveling drug war from a distance in the U.S. remake.

The question I found myself posing then was why does the original work so much better? And I think that is because the deadpan (pun intended) black humour seems to sit better when it is played lower key as it is in the original. You don’t have the highs of Tom Bateman’s performance in the remake as the vegan drug lord, but you do get a more consistent tone.

Ultimately though there isn’t much to separate the films because they are so similar.