At least we don’t have to follow a character named “Gurty” anymore. But we do follow Gurty’s ashes carted all around places where nobody should speak English, but everybody does anyway.
Let’s back up. There’s a North American tough guy truck driver who works the ice (from a driving perspective, that is). This is Mike (Liam Neeson). Ice roads are roads that exist only over waterways in freezing weather and Mike is an expert driver for such conditions. During a grand caper, Mike saved the day but lost his brother, the latter having survived for years despite the name “Gurty.”
This film has almost nothing to do with any of that. On the flimsiest of premises, “Gurty” has obliged Mike to bury his ashes on Mt. Everest, which seems a bit of a dick move. Everest doesn’t lack for dead bodies and the sensationalism that created them. Asking a non-climb –
“Oh, but Mike IS a climber, see?” Ah, I see. This blue-collar workin’ stiff also free solos in the badland peaks of South Dakota because of course he does. OK, it’s still a tall and stupid ask. I tell you what, when I die, I want my ashes spread on the Olympic marathon course by the winner during his/her (I’m not picky) gold-medal winning run. Do you see how stupid that sounds? Asking for an Everest burial is similar.
However, it gets us to Nepal where local politics has already caused a few deaths. Oh, and the deaths have occurred on this one-lane mountain road navigable only by the most skilled of drivers … basically, the icest of ice guys. What a coincidence! We’re following a skilled ice driver! *sigh*
There are few action scenes worth paying attention to in this film, and then there are scenes like the
one in which Mike chooses to drive an unfamiliar bus downhill on a 30% grade with a hairpin turn and lots of failure evidence in the ravine below. And all his passengers stay in the bus rather than saying, “How about you drive, we will walk this part, and if you survive, we’ll meet you at the bottom?” Or the part where Mike survives (of course) but overturns the bus and loses an axle … and a group of people with neither a garage nor a professional mechanic among them in the middle of the freaking Himalayas manage to replace the axle and get the bus up and moving again.
Yeah, ok.
I feel like I’m unnaturally drawn to Liam Neeson films like one of those dumbasses in the depths that gets suckered by the anglerfish. “Ohhhh. Look at the light! Isn’t it pretty! This will be great!” No, not great. It sucked. Again. I’ll never learn, but I can at least warn you all off Ice Road: Vengeance.
There was once a skilled Ice Road trucker
Who went to Nepal as instruckered
Caught in a local war
He keeps driving, but what for?
This ain’t your fight, motherfucker
Rated TV-14, 112 Minutes
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
Writer: Jonathan Hensleigh
Genre: Things that didn’t happen, but in Asia
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: You gotta be really into action films
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Truckers
