The Ice Road (Amazon) Movie Review & Comments

Casimir Harlow

Movies Editor
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
9,257
Reaction score
18,869
Points
8,059
Age
45
Location
Reading
The trusty Cas 6, I love it :D

Cheers for the review though; I will definitely check it out because it's Neeson and I'm curious more than anything else. It might work best for the younger generation who have never heard of Wages of Fear or Sorceror.

A 6 does sound fair.
 
Watched Sorcerer last year for the first time since I was a kid, that bridge scene was tense plus not exactly a happy ending. Will be interested to see this as it's on Amazon.
 
Having been a devotee of Ice Road Truckers, I felt the need for a lack of irresponsible speed, driving far too close and better CGI. Oh my, even the cell reception was 5G at times.
Lawrence (OG) Fishburne has had official membership in the secured retirement fund for aging actioners club for a while now and adds little.
The ripple ice effects are laughable and about as awe inspiring as a hackneyed magician with a tablecloth.
Does anyone even need discussing Neeson's acting now? Nope.
A 7 year old girl might aspire to the genderbending female carpark stunt truck driver and cis boys go wow at the trucks but. Yeah, That's it.
An originally decent tale; forged into a rough bastard file, that manages to blunt former tension down to a nub - Ron Swanson agrees.
 
Just watched it today, I have always enjoyed Liam Neeson films and always look forward when they pop up. However lately his films seem to be going down hill fast. He is too old for semi action flicks these days and need's to concentrate on films that stretch his acting capabilities.

For me a 6/10 at best.
 
What actually started out with a decent setting and set up , intitial decent story arc and a decent cast of charecters to fill it with . Well it soon ruined all the good work it garnered for the sake of a corporate villain action flick and hero to save the day .

What a waste as could of been such a tense race against time survival flick . Just for that infringement alone it gets a 3 from myself for setting me up just to dump me through its own stinking ice hole .
 
Having been a devotee of Ice Road Truckers, I felt the need for a lack of irresponsible speed, driving far too close and better CGI. Oh my, even the cell reception was 5G at times.
Lawrence (OG) Fishburne has had official membership in the secured retirement fund for aging actioners club for a while now and adds little.
The ripple ice effects are laughable and about as awe inspiring as a hackneyed magician with a tablecloth.
Does anyone even need discussing Neeson's acting now? Nope.
A 7 year old girl might aspire to the genderbending female carpark stunt truck driver and cis boys go wow at the trucks but. Yeah, That's it.
An originally decent tale; forged into a rough bastard file, that manages to blunt former tension down to a nub - Ron Swanson agrees.

It's probably the kind of feature that really needed a level of practical stunt work to deliver authentic tension (like the adaptations before it, and like the Mission Impossible films now, say) as that's the entire premise.

They could have kept the Sorcerer/Wages concept of carrying relatively volatile explosives (and say that helicopter transportation was out of the question in the weather), ditched any 'villains' and driven a trio of big rigs across the ice with Jaws-like implied threat getting a lot of mileage.

Then saved themselves for a big bridge grand finale (rather than a whimper).

If they really wanted an bad CG avalanche on a winding mountain ledge in between, they could have had some infighting caused by Larry F dying at the start and the girl having to make the decision to cut the line, thus 'killing' him, a mate of the other two. They fight, she pulls a gun, they get it off her, it goes off... avalanche.
NO GENERIC VILLAINS NEEDED

But really, driving a truck on thawing ice, around a narrow mountain road, then across a bridge could be made tense enough by the right director, and with the right intentions.

NO GENERIC VILLAINS NEEDED

Anybody who has the gall not to reference Wages/Sorcerer as even inspiration for this clearly hasn't been paying enough attention whilst cribbing from it to understand what works.

Freaking The Mandalorian did it better than this.
 
Neeson films are starting to feel like Jason Statham films. Reliably mediocre...(!)

In saying that, I actually really enjoyed Cold Pursuit recently. Typical action stuff but laced with self-awareness and some great black humour.
 
OK I started writing my thoughts on this just before the white fluffy stuff falling downhill as decided to prepare food for tonight's meal .

It's still going on , and on . It does not want to end :eek: , ah the worse part of this bloody film we will keep pushing at you .

It's now a 2 / 10 ...
 
Last edited:
Anyone watching this on a cx oled ? I’m using filmmaker mode and there’s a lot of black crush, could it be the lack of HDR?
 
Thanks for the review Cas. You are spot on about trucks being driven on a thawing Ice Road being enough plot. I'll probably watch it until the plot gets too silly.
 
Hmm , thx Cass , i watched this last night, generally happy to cut Neeson slack as he reruns taken in a perpetual groundhog day circus, but really felt this was shite. So a 3 for me, enjoyed his last -0 snow plough caper though ( funny cant remember its name? Taken,snowplough 3 or something.)
 
I bowed out after the opening CGI sequence with the truck, which was so incredibly inept that I knew I wasn't going to be onboard for the rest of the film...
 
For me, the trucks give it extra points... if you like trucks then definitely watch it IMO, the rest of the film doesn't matter. Loads of great turbo whistle :)
 
Anyone watching this on a cx oled ? I’m using filmmaker mode and there’s a lot of black crush, could it be the lack of HDR?
I'm watching it on a C6 and it is very dark in HDR.
 
Mental note to myself. Stop watching Liam Neeson films.

This was absolutely dire. 3/10
 
I'm almost at the end of this nonsense, I hope. I initially switched it off after the early scene where the dump truck goes over the edge as it looked like it was made on a Sega megadrive. In the end, we stuck it back on as we couldn't be arsed to look for something else.

My main gripe though isn't the terrible CGI, ropey acting or dodgy script. It's the total and utter lack of any sense of tension or urgency. We're told they're on a clock. 30 hours or whatever until the miners oxygen runs out. Yet, at every available opportunity, there seems to be time for some completely unnecessary exposition or meaningless dialogue.

It was marginally better than scrolling thru the apps looking for something to watch.
 
Last edited:
^^^^^
All fair points. The terrible CGI peeved me right off though. Laugable.

LN has stooped to a new low to get involved in such low brow stuff.
 
I've never been a massive fan of Wages Of Fear but Sorcerer if a big favourite. I just though this one was a big frozen moose turd in comparison. It was nonsense.
I have no doubt I'll watch it again, my mrs seemed to really like it, and I'll be easier on it's flaws and failings next time as I'll already know what they are. But if you take those away there isn't really much of anything left. Just typical Liam Neeson. In a truck. In the snow. Doing stuff.
I'm still looking forward to whatever comes next in the Liam Neeson movie franchise though, he usually manages to bounce back from a bum movie with... another bum movie.
 
6/10 from me, entertaining Saturday night fodder after a couple of beers 😲🙄
 
I watched it last night and hooked from the start of the engines starting up, although a few poor spots
bundle of dynamite exploding a few yards away from Liam and co does them no damage, also poor cgi for the explosion from the villain's point of view and it looked massive. Also hated the brother at the gate thing which either he stopped the truck which no way could he or was a pointless action.
The plot was a bit unclear about what management had done something till the end or I missed it
cutting the alarms off which we knew at the start but why? which was they knew methane was in there and was risking it to keep mining
one other thing was the on foot chase which was a bit silly, but wondering how many give the film scores of 5 or less will happily watch F9 and give it a way better score.
Anyway despite the minor problems an enjoyment score of
7/10 from me.
 
Umm, Cas, can I speak to your manager? :)

Watched it last night and it was, at best, 3 out of 10.

There was nothing to redeem the film, the story was terrible, the CGI was terrible, the acting was terrible,
choosing the suit over the trucker for some reason, suit bad guy was the lowest rent bad guy you could cast, action man barbie bad guy was laughable.

I really haven't got the time to list all of it's flaws.

A fair few episodes of Ice Road Truckers have been head and shoulders over this.

Oh and @GreyMutton I was watching it with friends and numerous times one of us would exclaim, oh yes, good time to have a chat, no hurry at all, perhaps a nice cup of tea and a biscuit would be good now...

If it was a drinking game we would have been floating home.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Generic Hollywood crap of the highest order. Cartoon characters, predictable corporate assholes, shoehorned in fashionable identity politics, Poundland CGI, weak action scenes and atrocious dialogue. One of those films where characters know things only the audience knows, such as who is in what vehicle and what they were up to 5 minutes earlier.

As Cas says, we didn’t NEED villains in a story where the situation alone is so perilous.

Best I can say is that some scenes looked nice in 4K with those gleaming trucks against the icy backdrops.

3/10

Main takeaway for me was how terrifyingly old Matt McCoy looks. Joking aside, is he ill? He’s only 63.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom