Jonathan Hensleigh is good at spectacular silliness; he was one of the writers of Armageddon. But where there was humor in the super-sized hubris of that Michael Bay circus, there is little to no such delight to be found in Ice Road: Vengeance, which Hensleigh wrote and directed. It is almost as if the film is stuck on the side of the road, trying to fix its flat. Flat, you say? Well, this action thriller sports a flat tone and a flat-footed storyline that Stevie Wonder could navigate without help. Liam Neeson is lucky he’s got The Naked Gun coming up to help wash away the memory of this straight-to-streaming slog.
Neeson’s ice road trucker, Mike McCann, starts the story trying to kill me by climbing cliffs without ropes like Tom Cruise in MI:2. We find out that this scenario is only a dream, and McCann is in therapy following the loss of his brother during his recent deployment. The therapist prescribes pills and some time away. Mike says no to the drugs and yes to a trip to Kathmandu, to fulfill his brother’s wish, and climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. Once there, he plans on scattering his brother’s remains.
Liam Neeson with Bingbing Fan, Georgia Flood, and young co-star in Ice Road: Vengeance
“Ruda Yash executes the grandfather of the family by having his bus forced over a cliff.”
Meanwhile, in Kathmandu, the fiendish Ruda Yash (Mahesh Jadu) is plotting to wipe out all the members of a local family who stand between him and control over the land. He wants to sell the land in order to become richer and more powerful. Ruda Yash executes the grandfather of the family by having his bus forced over a cliff. Next, he goes after the father and his only son, Vijay (Saksham Sharma). This is where the ice road trucker enters the story, and this tale of power and corruption greets its working-glass hero with a bullet in the guts and kick in the teeth as McCann and his guide, Dhani (Bingbing Fan), get caught up in the chaos on the road to Mt Everest on a bus called the “Kiwi Express” driven by an Australian named Spike (Geoff Morrell).
What transpires is a sad, typical revenge story with Neeson here to inject his fading majesty into a fairly forgettable action outing that never truly picks up speed. The characters, both hero and villain, are just hollow cardboard, set up only to kill, get killed, or save the day. There are also no ice roads to be found in Ice Road: Vengeance. Perhaps the ice roads will return for vengeance because they weren’t featured? Only time will tell.
Ice Road: Vengeance hits all the beats of a standard action movie as subtly as an out-of-control vehicle tumbles down a precipitous incline before crashing and bursting into flames. There’s nothing fun or exciting or even interesting here. Let’s hope Neeson does better as Frank Drebin Jr. because I think the Ice Road franchise just hit a dead end.
"…trying to fix its flat. Flat, you say?"
