Strong Nordic women rule in thriller ‘Cold Courage’
Pihla Viitala as Mari and Sofia Pekkari as Lia in “Cold Courage,” a crime thriller on the AMC+ streaming platform.
Women in peril. Evil conspiracies. So many parking garages. You know the drill.
Or do you?
The people behind “Cold Courage” are hoping you don’t. After airing on the Nordic streaming network Viaplay last year, the twisty thriller made its U.S. debut recently on the AMC+ streaming platform.
Set in London during six fraught weeks leading up to the national elections, “Cold Courage” follows the nail-biting journey of Lia (Sofia Pekkari, “Wallander”), a graphic artist whose deliberately under-the-radar life is upended when she is drawn into the web of a shadowy social justice group called “The Studio.”
Under the leadership of a charismatic psychologist named Mari (Pihla Viitala, “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”), The Studio is focused on taking down right-wing politician Arthur Fried (John Simm), whose promise to put the “great” back in Great Britain is riling up the masses in a way that looks uncomfortably familiar.
A loner who specializes in nighttime jogs through seedy neighborhoods, Lia is too preoccupied with paying her rent to stake her claim on either side of the political aisle. Money is money, and who cares where it comes from? But she is invested in the fate of Nina (Toni O’Rourke), who gave Lia a job and a place to crash when Lia arrived in London from Finland with no friends and zero prospects.
When Nina disappears, the well-connected Mari offers to track her down. All Lia has to do is get a job in Fried’s campaign office and report what she sees.
To no one’s surprise, “all” ends up being anything from picking locks to downloading information from your boss’s evil henchwoman’s secret cellphone. And while Lia didn’t see her extra duties coming, she turns out to be an excellent spy. Also handy with a knife and very good at lying.
The series was adapted from two bestselling novels by Finnish journalist Pekka Hiltunen, and
The Studio’s “Alias”-level plan for derailing Fried’s campaign is just the tip of a massive plot iceberg.
While she is doing the Studio’s bidding, Lia is also keeping a stalker at bay and reliving her brief but traumatic brush with a ruthless human trafficking ring.
And while Mari is running The Studio, she is trying to keep tabs on her father, who is attempting to expose a toxic mining operation in Finland.
There is also the matter of Mari’s uncanny ability to read people, the fate of a young Muslim boy who was severely injured during a Fried rally, the Fried campaign’s ties to a white supremacist organization and the identity of the disfigured murder victim the media has dubbed “The Faceless Woman.”
If the series manages to keep its many plot plates spinning all the way through, it could be worth the sleep and fingernails you’ll sacrifice along the way.
For fans of of smart thrillers with a savage streak, this Nordic tale looks to be right up your dark alley.