The Ice Road (2021)

Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh | 109 minutes | action, adventure | Actors: Liam Neeson, Marcus Thomas, Laurence Fishburne, Amber Midthunder, Benjamin Walker, Holt McCallany, Martin Sensmeier, Matt McCoy, Matt Salinger, Chad Bruce, Adam Hurtig, Bradley Sawatzky, Marshall Williams, Paul Essiembre

In countries like Canada, Russia and the United States, where it can get really cold, ice roads are built in winter to supply remote areas. Sometimes such a route crosses a frozen lake, river or sea – if that happens to be the shortest route. Although the layers of ice over which these routes run are several tens of centimeters thick, it is of course still a risky undertaking to drive over them. Certainly if that has to happen with heavy thirty-tonners, as in the action film ‘The Ice Road’ (2021). Inspired by the stories shared by truckers in the reality series ‘Ice Road Truckers’, which has aired on the History Channel since 2017, Jonathan Hensleigh wrote a screenplay in which a rescue operation must be staged to free a group of miners from a collapsed mine in the Northern Canadian region of Manitoba. Hensleigh, who is best known as a screenwriter on films such as ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’, ‘Jumanji’ (both 1995) and ‘Armageddon’ (1998) and who also took the director’s chair for ‘The Ice Road’, strict good old Liam Neeson for the lead role. The Irish veteran is already approaching seventy, but that doesn’t stop him from crossing swords with much younger opponents in one action film after another. Speaking of badass…!

In ‘The Ice Road’ Neeson plays Mike McCann, an experienced truck driver who has a somewhat unhappy career when he has to take his PTSD and aphasia-stricken brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas) in tow. Gurty is a genius mechanic who can fix technical defects on trucks in no time, but his condition also makes him a bit unpredictable and a target of ridicule for less understanding colleagues. When Mike loses his job again after yet another incident with Gurty, he is about to have his brother committed. At least temporarily, so he can earn some money to rent a truck so they can start their own business. But then a perilous but very lucrative assignment comes his way. Jim Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne) is looking for a team of truckers to help on a rescue mission. Eight people have died in a mine explosion in Manitoba and 26 are still trapped underground. If they are not freed within thirty hours, they too will succumb. To get to the mine in time, the motorcade has to travel on ice roads. That in itself is dangerous, but since it is already April and the roads are actually already closed, it is very much like a suicide attack to drive three large trucks with the same number of heavy drill heads on the ice roads. Mike has nothing to lose anyway – and given the $200,000 reward for all participants who make it all the way to the finish line, all the more to gain – and goes along. Because a mechanic has to come along, Gurty can also join as Mike’s co-driver. The second truck is driven by Goldenrod himself and the third by a tough young woman, Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), whose brother turns out to be trapped in the mine. At the last minute, Varnay (Benjamin Walker) also joins the company, actuary and claims adjuster of Katka, the company that manages the mine. When disaster strikes hard on the first stretch of ice, Mike gets serious suspicions that he is a saboteur who will do anything to prevent the mission from succeeding…

Jonathan Hensleigh has a decent resume as a screenwriter and director, but his last film before ‘The Ice Road’ dates back to 2011 (‘Kill the Irishman’, starring Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer, among others). His return is certainly not his best work. ‘The Ice Road’ is quite predictable and the credibility is dropping by the minute. Anyone who has looked at Neeson’s palmares of the past fifteen years knows that he now has a patent on the character of the rugged action hero in age who can still be kicked and beaten, but simply cannot be knocked down. Here he also gets the necessary blows. Not only from the bad guy (who just hasn’t got it on his forehead yet that he’s the bad guy…) but also from the capricious and ruthless nature and the bitter cold. The technology also lets him down at times, but when Neeson is on a mission, nothing can stop him from completing it. The only thing that bothers him a bit is that the story is so clichéd, the characters are rather flat and the CGI at times looks laughably amateurish. Of course, Neeson can’t compete with that – not even him. Fans of Laurence Fishburne will be disappointed, because the star from, among others, the ‘Matrix’ series unfortunately gets very little to do here. Amber Midthunder is a spunky type and Marcus Thomas has the thankless job of providing the film with some kind of misplaced sentiment. The actors in the minor roles – Matt McCoy, Holt McCallany and Martin Sensmeier, among others – are too limited to stand out in a positive way.

Despite all those shortcomings, ‘The Ice Road’ somehow manages to build up a certain tension. Whether it’s because you’re aware of the dangers of such a mission with heavily loaded trucks over an increasingly thin layer of ice – if you drive too fast, waves will form under the ice and cause cracks on the door. , and driving too slow is obviously not an option at all – or because of our sympathy for the lived-in, unlikely action hero that Liam Neeson is today – who knows. In any case, ‘The Ice Road’ raises mixed feelings: on the one hand you get annoyed by all the clichés and poorly executed action scenes, on the other hand this action thriller is entertaining enough to keep you busy for one hour and 49 minutes.