When The Ice Road (2021) was released, I remember thinking that it was an enjoyable but fairly disposable Liam Neeson vehicle. What I didn’t think to myself was that 4 years on that we would be treated to a sequel. But here we are, with the recent release Ice Road: Vengeance which brings back both leading man Liam Neeson and director Jonathan Hensleigh.
Taking place a few years after the first film, Mike McCann (Neeson) has been struggling with anxiety and PTSD after the death of his brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas). Whilst looking through Gurty’s belongings, Mike comes across a letter that informs him of what Gurty wanted done with his remains if anything was ever to happen to him. Gurty’s wish is that his ashes are scattered on Mount Everest, a location he always wanted to visit.
Mike travels to Nepal where he meets up with local guide Dhani (Fan Bingbing) who is going to take him to Everest to scatter Gurty’s ashes. During their bus trip they and their fellow passengers are held at gunpoint by mercenaries who are looking to kidnap Vijay (Saksham Sharma), the grandson of a founding member of a local village. His grandfather and the founding family members are opposing the construction of a hydroelectric dam and the nefarious developer Rudra (Mahesh Jadu) has decided the quickest way to get rid of this opposition is to get rid of the founding members, with Vijay knowing their location.
The mercenaries kidnapping attempt is foiled by Mike and Dhani but this just leads to further obstacles, with them having to work together and fight against Rudra’s armed thugs in order to save themselves as well as the local’s village.
Ice Road: Vengeance put me very much in mind of the type of action fodder that Cannon was churning out in the 1980’s. Well not all Cannon action films, but more specifically those starring Charles Bronson. Like Bronson in those films, Neeson is way past his prime, with the audience having to seriously suspend belief when it comes to the action.
Whilst in Taken (2007) it was easy to believe Neeson as a man with a particular set of skills, at 73 years old is stretching credibility to see Neeson get the upper hand on opponents less than half his age. Even so, I would be a liar to say that I don’t look forward to seeing Neeson kicking ass, even if he is advancing in years.
However, even taking out the fact that Neeson is getting a bit too long in the tooth for this type of film, none of Ice Road: Vengeance’s action scenes really stand out. There’s the odd bit of hand to hand combat, some shootouts and chases but none of these bring about the excitement you would expect. It doesn’t help that Ice Road: Vengeance has some truly shocking CGI. Honestly, it is inexcusable in this day and age, especially when I see lower budgeted productions with higher quality effects work than what I saw here.
The only truly memorable sequence that comes to mind is when Neeson and company have to work together and reassemble their bus out of parts from other wrecked vehicles. It’s the only scene in the film I can think of that made the supporting characters worthwhile other than the annoying arseholes they had been up till that point.
Well, not all of them come across that way. Fan Bingbing certainly holds her own, with her not only being a likeable presence but helping pick up the slack during the film’s action. She certainly stands out from the rest of the supporting cast, and the only one that seems like a rounded character, even if like the rest she isn’t given the greatest material to play with.
Honestly, I know it may sound like I’m laying into Neeson, but as always he manages to entertain. Sure, his action scenes may be slightly stilted but he still convinces where it matters, excelling in the more drama orientated scenes. With the quantity of action movies Neeson has appeared in, I think it is easy to forget how good an actor he can be. There’s a reason that Steven Speilberg ask him back in the day for Schindler’s List (1993).
Whereas the first film had a strong focus on the relationship between Neeson’s Mike and his brother Gurty, the sequel lacks such an emotional core. Hensleigh does try to continue this thread somewhat by having several flashbacks to before Gurty went off to War. While it is good to see Marcus Thomas’ involvement, the scenes are surplus to requirements. It’s almost like Hensleigh is treating the audience like idiots, assuming we need a recap of what was already explained previously.
Mix this in with some truly illogical character decisions and dialogue exchanges and you begin to wonder how this can possibly be from the same man who wrote Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995). Actually, it’s not even on par with his take on The Punisher (2004), a film I very much enjoyed but one that’s not exactly known for great writing.
Hensleigh’s poor dialogue and plotting could be overlooked if he brought some visual flourishes to his direction, but the film is shot in such a bog standard, straightforward style that it never feels like it comes to life. Now, some of my favorite Directors through the years shot events in what I would call a “no bullshit” manner. Now while their films may not have been exactly “stylish”, they still had a sense of energy, with the action always generating the necessary thrills, something I couldn’t really say about Hensleigh’s work here.
The Kathmandu setting does do a little to make the film come alive, although it becomes blatantly obvious that the film was shot elsewhere, with only the odd establishing shot being used to set the scene. Upon checking, the film was shot in Australia, something that should have become obvious to me after realizing that half of the cast were made up of actors from soap operas Home & Away or Neighbours.
It’s a shame, as I know that Hensleigh is capable of more. The previously mentioned The Punisher was an extremely enjoyable, albeit silly, actioner. His crime biopic Kill the Irishman (2011) was also a seriously underrated movie that was filled with great performances. I had hoped from those movies that Hensleigh would have gone on to better things, and although the Ice Road was relatively high profile it wasn’t the classic film that it could have been. Even so, it towers over its sequel, which for the most part just manages to disappoint.
Neeson has the upcoming Naked Gun reboot due, so hopefully that will be a more worthy starring vehicle. He has stated that he is retiring from the action genre, but considering he has had several action films come out since that statement, I think it’s fair to say that Ice Road: Vengeance won’t be his last action outing.
Plot: 2/5
Acting: 2.5/5
Action: 2/5
Overall:2.2/5