Liam Neeson’s unexpected yet remarkably durable second act as a grizzled action star isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, and each one of his modest hits makes it that much easier to imagine the 69-year-old actor will be able to keep this up for many years to come.
Movies like “Non-Stop” and “Run All Night” tried to hide that fact behind their titles — even “The Commuter” promised a greater degree of movement than it ultimately delivered — but Neeson’s more recent efforts have stopped trying to disguise that skewed ratio between intensity and exertion.
That streak would seem to continue in Netflix’s “The Ice Road,” a frosty “Wages of Fear” riff in which Neeson plays a truck driver whose entire job is to just sit in one place for almost two straight days as he races a big rig down a brittle path that might crack open at any moment.
Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh , “The Ice Road” doesn’t tire itself out by concealing its obvious debt to other, better movies; it’s all too easy to imagine Hensleigh walking into a boardroom at Netflix HQ, lighting a cigar, and rhetorically asking: “What if ‘Sorcerer,’ but cold?” while some executive slammed their fist on the money button.
The story begins deep inside a remote northern Canadian diamond mine, which is pretty much the last place on Earth you want to be in the first scene of an action-thriller.
Mike hasn’t done a lot of jobs over the last decade or so because he’s spent most of that time looking after his mechanic brother Gurty doesn’t have any choice but to hire the McCann brothers to drive one of the three color-coded 65,000 lb.
The second truck in the caravan will be steered by a twentysomething indigenous girl with a chip on her shoulder .
You know that at least one of the trucks is going to fall through the ice at some point, and it really couldn’t be easier to predict who will live to see the closing credits , so Hensleigh does his best to get ahead of the game.
None of what follows is as captivating as the premise itself, or the ominous sight of pressure waves rippling under the surface of the ice before things go haywire, but Hensleigh is still able to squeeze a few drops of fun out of the situation as it falls apart.
Even if Mike were shown to be an aggressive racist , the speed at which he accuses Tantoo of sabotage would be hard to swallow during such an all-hands-on-deck situation; meanwhile, her distaste for white people and what they’ve done to her native land is mostly played for laughs despite the fact that she has more at stake in this mission than anyone.
Hensleigh can’t afford to heat up any real suspense without the whole movie falling apart under his feet, which is mighty unfortunate considering how much potential the ice roads have as the setting for a heart-in-your-throat adventure.
Still, it begrudgingly must be admitted that the simple pleasures of the movie’s second half are satisfying enough to remind you why Neeson’s star has never shined brighter than it does in his twilight years, and why he’s probably got enough spare tires in his trunk to keep on trucking in forgettable, relatively old-school programmers like this one for another decade to come.