Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Ice Road’ on Netflix, in Which Liam Neeson Plays a Trucker Hauling a Big Rig Over Treacherous Territory

Add Netflix original movie The Ice Road to Liam Neeson’s ever-growing list of generic action movies. As the title insinuates, he plays an ice road trucker who needs to drive a truck over a road made of ice. Perhaps this is obvious; perhaps this is the type of movie that likes to plainly state things, so in the spirit of the movie that plainly states things, I, too, hereby plainly state things. And here one is obligated to invoke the History Channel series Ice Road Truckers, which made the world aware of one of the world’s most dangerous jobs — a job that Liam Neeson’s big-screen persona could handle, no prob. Who knows, if this movie gets enough eyeballs on it, maybe his next action vehicle will be Deadliest Catch: Liam Neeson Catches Crabs.

THE ICE ROAD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: SOME OPENING TEXT: If you’ve watched Ice Road Truckers, you don’t need to read it, and probably already know that some truckers pilot heavy-ass tractor-trailers over a mere 30 inches of ice, which sounds dangerous, and might be, but if we question it too much it’ll probably totally squanch our enjoyment of this movie. KATKA DIAMOND MINE, NORTH MANITOBA: A very cheesy bad-CGI methane explosion traps 26 miners underground. Their air is running out. The only thing that can save them is a 25-ton wellhead, and if that’s true, why isn’t Liam Neeson playing the 25-ton wellhead? Because it’s outside of his range? Anyway, they don’t have a 25-ton wellhead, so they have to order one from North Dakota. Unfortunately, it doesn’t qualify for Amazon Prime one-day shipping, so someone’s gonna hafta put one on a truck and haul it over melty April ice roads, and the man driving that truck is gonna hafta be Liam Neeson.

A little backstory: Our Neesonic protag is Mike, who we meet punching out a shitbird who calls his brother the r-word. Mike is a truck driver and his sibling Gurty (Michael Thomas) is his mechanic. Gurty is a war vet suffering from aphasia, so his brother has to take care of him. Whether punching the shitbird is taking care of him or not punching the shitbird is taking care of him is up for debate, but Mike gets them both fired for punching the shitbird. (The job status of the shitbird remains a mystery.) Mike tries to take Gurty to the VA hospital to alleviate some of his caretaker burdens — “I don’t have much tire left on my treads” is the actual line he speaks, which seems like a jumbled metaphor, but nevermind, carry on. The doctor just throws some heavy opioids at Gurty, and instead of punching the doctor, Mike says, “Kiss my Irish ass.” I think that’s progress.

So they’re a touch desperate when they take a gig at the local male strip joint. No! Actually, they’re hired by Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne) to haul a 25-ton wellhead over melty April ice roads to save the miners, and the $50k payday — each! — will allow them to buy their own rig and achieve self-employment. Goldenrod and young Native American tough girl Tantoo (Amber Midthunder, Legion) will also be hauling 25-ton wellheads over melty April ice, and the reasoning is, it’s SO dangerous, if one truck goes down, and another truck goes down, at least there’ll be one truck left to save the miners, who we see in high-drama scenes that seem sort of pointless until later in the movie. Joining the truckers on the trip is Varnay (Benjamin Walker of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter fame), an insurance actuary, and if you’re not sure what an actuary does, it’s someone who assesses risk, so that makes Jack from Fight Club an actuary, and it also makes Varnay the Paul Reiser-in-Aliens character. Now all that’s left to do is haul some 25-ton wellheads over some melty April ice. WOULD THAT IT WERE SO SIMPLE.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’m reasonably convinced The Ice Road will be the best trucker-action-car-chase movie until George Miller remakes Maximum Overdrive. It’s not as good a trucker-action-car-chase movie as <em>Mad Max: Fury Road though, nor is it as good as Steven Spielberg’s Duel, which you have to go watch right now. The hot CB-radio action (actual line: “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Over.”) brings to mind Smokey and the Bandit; the hot trapped-miner action brings to mind BOATS movie The 33; the hot generic Liam Neeson action brings to mind every hot generic Liam Neeson action movie he’s made since Taken; the hot freezing-cold-Arctic action brings to mind the dogsledding scenes from The Call of the Wild, Snow Dogs and, oh, what the hell, Snow Buddies.

Performance Worth Watching: A movie in which Liam Neeson says “Kiss my Irish ass” will never feature a better performance than Liam Neeson’s.

Memorable Dialogue: When Mike figures out what the hell’s going on (over), Neeson digs in and delivers this simmering doozy: “Oh, now I’m angry.”

Sex and Skin: None. TBHA25TWOSMAIRTF: Too Busy Hauling A 25-Ton Wellhead Over Some Melty April Ice Roads To F—.

Our Take: Once The Ice Road gets rolling (on the melty April ice road, natch), it’s pretty much full-throttle, a spectacle of serviceable action from director Jonathan Hensleigh (2004’s The Punisher). The twisty, overcomplicated plot is, as they say, one damn thing after another, some of them wholly feasible, others less so, most of them predictable. But all of those damn things are devised to test the resourcefulness of the Liam Neeson character, who inevitably will be required to grab a pistol and climb outside the cab of a moving semi-truck; this is no Fury Road by any means, and he’s no War Boy, but none of the War Boys were armed with the patented Neeson gravitas.

Needless to say, remarkably complex problems are solved — often with big chains, heavy cables, traction mats and other tools of the trucker trade — in remarkably short order with cinematic shorthand. The movie shows us some physics but also a fair amount of shmysics, lest it be too pragmatic and less artificially exciting. But artificial excitement is still excitement, as long as one suspends one’s disbelief. There’s a point in the movie where the trucks exit the ice road, and we look down at our watches and realize there sure seems to be a lot of movie left, but we assure ourselves that, yes, this is the type of movie that will deposit one last long sheet of thin ice under the tires before they reach the slowly asphyxiating miners.

The movie features some less-than-half-assed subtext about the American system’s poor treatment of veterans, and the racism Tantoo deals with. It feels like tokenism, and it’s probably better if the movie doesn’t bother to address such things if it’s not going to do its diligence. It already clocks in at 109 minutes, which might be slightly too long for a movie about hauling a 25-ton– well, you know. It’s a movie that exists for its cornball beneath-the-surface shots of tractor-trailers rumbling over cracking ice, of trucks zooming along under the aurora borealis, of Neeson gritting his teeth and getting shit done. We frankly shouldn’t ask for any more from The Ice Road.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Gird your expectations accordingly — as you would for any Neeson action film of the past decade — and you’ll enjoy The Ice Road. It’s also good for the occasional laff.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Ice Road on Netflix