The Ending of ‘Cold Blood’ Explained: The Movie That Should Have Been Longer

‘Cold Blood’ is a 2019 action thriller film written and directed by Frédéric Petitjean. ‘Cold Blood’ is not a good movie, but the the most important thing is that it has an hour and a half runtime, which proved to be far too short to tell a significant story. In any case, if you’ve already watched ‘Cold Blood’ and you’re not exactly sure what happened, you’re not the only one, and hence, why we decided to explain the movie -and the ending to you. Let’s go!

Henry is a survivalist with a twisted profession

The movie starts with Henry (played by Jean Reno) assassinating an important industrialist businessman identified only as Mr. Kessler. He does it in a sauna with a synthetic (or ice???) bullet, which makes forensics useless and gives off a vibe that he is a highly menacing and difficult-to-catch assassin.

When he is not assassinating people, Henry lives in the mountains alone, surviving on the bare minimum, but for some reason, he also has a highly lucrative well, well-paying “job” and needs the money. Anyway, one day, while he is ice fishing, a girl has a snowmobile accident near his cabin, and she is a total wreck, impaled by trees through multiple limbs. She manages to somehow crawl to Henry’s cabin, and he takes care of her…for the time being.

Kappa is a detective assigned to the case

Kappa (played by Joe Anderson) and his partner Davies (Ihor Ciszkewycz) are your typical small-town detectives assigned to the case. The context reveals that Kappa, for some reason, transferred from New York to Washington and that he is heartbroken for a girl, but the movie never ever touches any of this background information, although at the beginning of the movie, it “foreshadowed” like it’s going to be important later on, it’s not.

Despite having limited resources and a limited skillset to track down a highly dangerous assassin, Kappa and Davies manage to land a good lead when they interrogate Brigleur (François Guétary), who reveals that Mr. Kessler has a son whose whereabouts are unknown. In case something happens to Mr. Kessler, his son Charlie inherits everything; in case something happens to Charlie, the company will be divided between the shareholders and sold, or something like that, which means that somebody had quite a good reason to get rid of Charlie and ol’ Kessler. Kessler also had a wife, who is currently in a mental institution due to being mentally unstable and basically non-conversational for the last 10 years or so. She doesn’t remember a thing and likely won’t benefit from being aware that her husband is dead.

In any case, Kappa now needs to locate Charlie, and he gets a lucky break when he sees that both people connected to Malcolm privately called a single number – which supposedly belongs to Charlie.

Henry is highly paranoid about the girl

The that Henry saved (played by Sarah Lind) claims that her name is Melody and that she accidentally fell asleep or lost control of the snowmobile while traveling through the mountains. This is life since flashbacks to her past reveal that she was running away from Brigleur’s right-hand man and used quite a lot of cash to hide her trail and rent a snowmobile. In any case, Henry is highly suspicious of “Melody” and wants her out as soon as she can stand on her own two feet. He doesn’t trust her one bit and is willing to let her freeze to death, but despite voicing this, he makes repeated efforts to save her life.

The plot twist in ‘Cold Blood’ is not really a plot twist

Kappa visits the mental institution where Kessler’s wife is staying, and despite being allegedly completely insane, the old gal keeps repeating how she will forget everything and everyone and how she doesn’t remember anything or anyone. It’s quite frankly annoying, and if they really wanted to make a point that she is a dementia patient, they could have written the character better. Samantha Bond makes every effort to sound as reasonable as possible and even imparts a few gems of wisdom to the young detective. In any case, this is the worst portrayal of dementia I’ve ever seen on-screen. Before Kappa leaves, Mrs. Kessler finds out that “Charlie” in question is not a “son” but rather a “daughter.” Brigleur misled him on purpose.

Brigleur and Malcolm have their own deal with Charlie

As it turns out, Melody, whom Henry is helping in the cabin, is the daughter of a man he assassinated. And she was there with a purpose. Just as Henry suspected, she went to great lengths to stage an accident and land in his neck of the woods. In any case, Brigleur and Malcolm are trying to locate Charlie on their own; they know where she went, and Malcolm is set to retrace her steps and bring her home before she seriously hurts herself. He locates the vendor where Charlie rented a snowmobile and tells him to text him as soon as Charlie’s snowmobile emergency beacon goes online.

Charlie tries to kill Henry

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Charlie tries to kill Henry back at the cabin, but being the smart assassin that he is, he figures her plan out and places a straw decoy, which results in Charlie shooting a straw doll instead of him. Henry takes Charlie down and tortures her inside the cabin until she spills the beans on her real identity. Charlie says that she located him on purpose to avenge her father, and Henry reveals that he also has a contract with her. This makes me wonder why such a cold-blooded hardcore assassin didn’t already off her.

In any case, a snowstorm starts brewing, and Charlie uses chaos as a distraction to activate the beacon in her snowmobile, which the vendor that rented it to her sees on screen and texts her location to Malcolm immediately. Malcolm, for some reason, texts the location to Kappa, and both he and Davies are on the case as well, venturing into the Washington wilderness in the middle of a tough snowstorm.

What happened to Charlie at the end of the movie?

Henry is trying to figure out how to survive the snowstorm when Malcolm manages to locate his cabin and Charlie; he starts yelling Charlie’s name and gives away his location to Henry, who is, I reacted, a highly skilled assassin. Henry starts hunting Malcolm in the snow, and judging by the “fight” scene between Malcolm and Henry, this extraction mission is way above his pay grade since Henry eliminates him quite fast and easily.

But Malcolm’s death wasn’t in vain. Charlie escaped from the cabin, but her failing health kept her from making any significant progress. She is stopped by Henry, who locates her and is about to shoot her. He, a professional assassin, hesitated and was, in turn, shot by Kappa, who arrived just in time with his partner and the rest of the law enforcement.

So what happened in the end? Nothing. Henry died as an amateur and Charlie walked away, she wasn’t charged with conspiracy to murder despite vengeance being her sole reason for being there at the cainb in the first place. We don’t know what happened to Brigleurl. We also don’t know what happened to Kappa, who was promoted to sheriff (this was mentioned several times but led nowhere).

‘Clood Blood’ is definitely nonsensical and filled with plot holes that will drive you insane. Every single thing that Henry does is idiotic despite being a “brilliant assassin,” and every single thing that Charlie does is idiotic despite the narrative trying to paint her as some kind of highly-trained ninja with a beef to settle. And that “Art of War” stuff, and “wolf never forgets the scent of human’s blood.”I’m speechless about how bad the dialogue in this movie was. The only thing that absolutely wins is the scenery, which is breathtaking.

In any case, it’s a bad movie with no clear resolution, and after sitting through it, you will have a feeling like there is a good third of it missing.

What’s your take on ‘Cold Blood’? Let us know in the comments below!