Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Writer/director: Jonathan Hensleigh, Rialto Distribution.
If diversion is at the top of the entertainment list for you, then here is total escapism. Don’t pull it apart, don’t look for perfection, just enjoy the here and now. It may not be plausible, but there’s entertainment value – and it can be relaxing.
Writer/director Hensleigh (The Punisher, Kill the Irishman, Jumanji, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Armageddon) establishes an ominous tone with remarkable, widescreen panoramas of challenging snowy expanses, though action sequences feel restrained.
After a remote diamond mine collapses in far northern Canada, a ‘big-rig’ ice road driver, Mike McCann (Liam Neeson, The Honest Thief, The Marksman, Made in Italy, Cold Pursuit) must lead an impossible rescue mission across frozen oceans to save the trapped miners. Contending with thawing waters and a massive storm, they discover the real threat is one they never saw coming. McCann is part of a three-truck convoy that has to traverse some treacherous icy terrain to reach their eventual destination.
Mike’s younger brother, Gurty (Marcus Thomas), is in the passenger seat, a mechanic and Iraq war veteran suffering from PTSD and aphasia. Jim Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburn, The Matrix, Boyz in the Hood) is also on the journey. A long-time trucker, he organised this misson. Tantoo, (Amber Midthunder) is a troublemaking native woman who’s also a daring driver. One of the men trapped in the mine is her brother. Tagging along is a city slicker corporate actuary (Benjamin Walker) who may have nefarious intent.
There are both natural and human dangers on this icy trek. Neeson doesn’t have many opportunities to flash any kind of charisma or menace, although he does get to show some clout by the end.
Hensleigh was attracted to stories where something comes out in the human spirit, when men and women are in intensely dangerous situations. He was 10 years old when he saw The Wages of Fear, a French film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, a minor classic. “I saw it on television and it’s about a band of losers who are hired to take nitroglycerin across a mountain range. I’ve been obsessed with this film ever since.”
“The notion of mismatched blue-collar people who have to go on a journey together – one so perilous that no one without proper motivations would do it – fascinated me. I wanted to make an Of Mice and Men crossed with The Wages of Fear. It’s been
a 48-year journey.”
The Ice Road is screening in cinemas.
