Ice Road: Vengeance
review by Bobby Blakey
In 2021 Liam Neeson teamed up with director Jonathan Hensleigh for the action film The Ice Road. Now the two are reteaming for the follow-up Ice Road: Vengeance co-starring Fan Bingbing, Marcus Thomas, Grace O’Sullivan, Saksham Sharma, Bernard Curry, Geoff Morrell, Mahesh Jadu, Amelia Bishop, Shapoor Batliwalla, Monish Anand, Shivantha Wijesinha, and CJ Bloomfield. Could this film bring the action fans are hoping for or will it fail to make the drive up the mountain?
Ice Road: Vengeance follows big rig ice road driver Mike McCann who travels to Nepal to scatter his late brother’s ashes on Mt. Everest. While on a packed tour bus traversing the deadly 12,000 ft. terrain of the infamous Road to the Sky, McCann and his mountain guide encounter a group of ruthless mercenaries and must fight to save not only themselves but the innocent passengers and a local village on the brink of destruction.
Not sure we needed a sequel to The Ice Road. It was a decent enough action film, but there was really nothing about it that screamed follow-up but here we are. Being a fan of Neeson I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still eager to check it out necessary or not. One of the issues with making a franchise out of something like this is that it typically feels repetitive and while that is here per usual, I give them credit for trying to do something different in a still familiar tone.
The story, despite going in a new direction does touch on stuff from the previous film regarding his brother Gurty. They found a simple way to bring him back into the story as well that works, but it does fall into the usual silliness of just happening to get caught up in some new dangerous situation that he must fight back on. It makes you think you just wouldn’t want to hang
out with knowing he will end up getting us all killed in some insane situation by coincidence, but you just have to let that go.
The fun of the first film is dealing with the elements on the ice road along with the guns and fights, but this film ditches that element for the most part but keeps the rest of the action similar. There is a couple of moments higher up in the side of Mt. Everest to get into the “ice” but its just name alone to continue the story. The action is fine and nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times but still entertains.
The film’s run time is a bit long for this story and limps along at times trying to make it more important than anything is. There are numerous frustrating moments of characters making dumb decisions and some silly directions in the story, but it owns it and delivers a film on par with the previous outings. It’s a generic action flick that is worth just killing time to check out, but don’t expect anything you haven’t seen before.
Be sure to check out the first film, The Ice Road, currently on Netflix before diving into this film in theaters now and then On Demand on July 1st from Vertical Entertainment.