PLOT: Mike travels to Nepal to scatter his late brother’s ashes on Mt. Everest. When Mike and his mountain guide encounter mercenaries on a tour bus, they are forced to fight to save themselves, the passengers, and the local villagers’ homeland.
REVIEW: I’m not sure many of us expected there to be a sequel to 2021’s The Ice Road, but here we are, in the land of sequels. Liam Neeson continues his action career in a way that we’ve seen time and time again: he ends up in a deadly situation, and has to fight his way out to survive. In Ice Road: Vengeance, Mike McCann has lost his brother and honor his last wishes and spread his ashes on Mount Everest. But when he helps prevent a kidnapping, he realizes there’s something sketchy going on and bands together with others to stop it. With his trucking skills.
In a lot of ways, this feels like a story from the 80s with its clear good guy/bad guy dynamics and town in peril plot. But you really have to shut your brain off with all of the boneheaded character decisions. The entire movie would be over in five minutes if there were just one critical thinker in the bunch. The kidnapping target, Vijay, is one of the dumber characters out there. Despite knowing he’s being tailed, he doesn’t even notice the people who are aggressively following him. He has to actively try to avoid eye contact so he doesn’t see them looking him with those “Hey, I want to kidnap you” eyes.
At this point, Neeson just can’t move well enough to make the action believable. While it may have worked in Taken, it gets progressively less believable the more he ages. Especially when he’s fighting guys so much younger than him. At least give him someone comparable to fight. But at least Neeson is still great with the human moments and those more subtle aspects. Bingbing Fan picks up some of the slack, but it’s all pretty basic. There isn’t a single action set piece that even stands out.
The dialogue exchanges are really off, particularly the flashbacks between Neeson and his brother. Not to mention how unnecessary those flashbacks feel. Exposition seems to be harder and harder to get across, and it’s infuriating. Much like The Final Reckoning, we don’t need everything so over-explained. In terms of stuff I actually enjoyed, there’s a section of the film where they have to DIY the bus and fix stuff in order to get down the mountain. Gives the side characters a little more agency and makes them feel less pointless. I’m not sure why they felt the film needed an angst teen character, but they have to check some boxes.
The green screen is shockingly bad at times. I’m still amazed that, in this day and age, that it’s even possible with these kinds of releases. Between this and the absolutely baffling character decisions, there is some so bad it’s good fun to be had. I mean, I laughed in this movie more than I did during most comedies. That’d be fine if that’s what they were going for but it was clearly not intentional.
I really didn’t enjoy my time with Ice Road: Vengeance. It was completely lacking in excitement or interesting characters, more often than not just reveling in mediocrity. Neeson constantly finds himself off to the side of the action, yet no one manages to stand out. Here’s hoping that next month’s The Naked Gun will get Neeson back on track, where he doesn’t have to make stuff like this anymore. Although I’m sure Grandpa’s everywhere would be glad if he kept up with them.
