Completing a loose trio of ice-themed films, after 2011’s “The Grey” and 2019’s “Cold Pursuit,” the Liam Neeson-starring “The Ice Road” is a serviceable, if incredibly convoluted, addition to a recent run of bland action movies that ask the actor to do the bare minimum— scowling as things explode around him.
The second film of 2021 to star Neeson, following “The Marksmen” (a film that you, and presumably Neeson, have already forgot existed), and written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, the screenwriter behind such forgettably serviceable films as “Armageddon” and “The Punisher,” “The Ice Road” takes the basic premise of an episode of “Ice Road Truckers,”—melting ice roads and the types of people that choose to drive over them—and overlays it with a confusing narrative of a nefarious drilling company in northern Manitoba. Oddly, even with a pretty stacked cast including Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany, Benjamin Walker, and Amber Midthunder, Hensleigh’s film is the exact type of mildly diverting Sunday morning hangover background noise that climbs its way to the top of Netflix’s top ten before disappearing into the ether of the streamer’s algorithmic chaos in the ensuing weeks.
Beginning with an explosion at the diamond mine, which traps the miners in an air pocket with only a few hours before they run out of oxygen, the film toggles back and forth between the miners, led by McCallany’s stoic boss, and attempts to deliver drilling equipment to the remote outpost via the titular roads. Playing Mike, whose bland name portends the one-note delivery that Neeson gives him (even if he’s perfected that singular note), “The Ice Road” begins as a type of dangerous mission that needs an equally dangerous crew. Bringing that crew together is Fishburne’s Goldenrod, whose name doubles as his defining character trait. Mike and his disabled brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas), a veteran struggling with PTSD who is also an ace mechanic that Mike takes care of, quickly sign up for the dangerous drive with the hopes of cashing in on the $50,000 payment to buy their own rig if they make it. Rounding out the group is Tantoo (Midthunder), a wayward activist trucker whose half-brother is trapped in the mine, and Walker’s Varnary, who works for the mining company as an insurer and demands to go on the trip.
From there, things get complicated, as if Hensleigh watched “The Wages of Fear” and decided that Clouzet’s film would be better served with more shoot-outs and double-crosses. While the first half of the film effectively plays on the anxiety of driving on the ice roads, mining the myriad ways that a rig might break through the ice to create sustained tension, Hensleigh’s script devolves as he introduces a double-cross that pits the team against each other. From there, the film moves from set-piece to set-piece with a workmanlike quality, placing Neeson’s Mike in a series of contrived situations that he is forced to escape from, all the while pursuing revenge against those that wronged him. Like almost every other Neeson movie of the last ten or so years, “The Ice Road ” foregrounds retribution, disregarding a taut set-up in favor of simplistic action beats.
By the time that Neeson is in a shoot-out with faceless antagonists chasing his rig on snowmobiles, as a questionably CGI-rendered avalanche threatens to obliterate everyone, “The Ice Road” has veered so far from its origins that one wonders if Hensleigh Frankensteined two vastly different scripts together. Likewise, while often cutting back to the miners’ plight, their problems within the cave are oddly under-realized, hinting at the possibility of the group turning on each other, debating whether to kill off some in order to save oxygen, only to quickly abandon this subplot in favor of more Neeson’s action hero heroics.
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Yet, what else does one expect from a late-period Neeson film, if not for simplified revenge? The only thing that seemingly separates “The Ice Road” from, say, “Cold Pursuit’ is its backdrop, using ice road truckers as window dressing for a story that Neeson could perform in his sleep. By the time he punches out the leader of this convoluted conspiracy, dropping the man in one hit, of course, “The Ice Road” has long ago veered off its titular road. Neeson has vaguely promised to stop making these types of films in the coming years, a promise that seems all the more absurd considering the actor recently turned 69. Here’s hoping that semi-retirement comes to fruition sooner rather than later, as Neeson can be a good, sometimes great actor when he puts forth the effort. Unfortunately, “The Ice Road” finds him on cruise control. [C-]
“The Ice Road” is available now on Netflix.