Ice Rd: Vengeance
Plot
Mike travels to Nepal to scatter the ashes of his late brother Gurty. However as soon as he arrives, he along with his bus tour are taken hostage by a group of mercenaries.
They are working for a corrupt official who is wanting to build a hydro electric dam in a small village, and the key opponents son in building the dam is in the bus.
Now mike must work with the son, to get him and his dad to safety, and stop the bad guys.
Direction
Jonathan Hensliegh, who wrote and directed the first film is back behind the camera, and also wrote the screenplay. He was also a writer for such films as Jumanji, Armageddon, Die Hard with a Vengeance (he must like that word).
Cast/Characters
Back from Ice Road are of course Liam Neeson as Mike, and Marcus Thomas as Gurty (in flashbacks).
New cast members include Fan Bingbing as Dhani, and many Australian cast members due to the filming location.
Breakdown
This was an unnecessary sequel, that astonishingly got made considering how the first film performed.
So much of the film doesn’t make sense (Mike’s survivors guilt is a throwaway moment, he is a seasoned rock climber now, and he’s… American??? Clearly he’s effing Irish! Why does everyone call him American???)
Mike feels like an entirely new character now, where as in the first film he was at least an ‘every-man’ put into a dire situation, here he is every action man ever – with more gun-play than John McCain! And more plot armour too!
There is some pretty terrible use of green screen and CGI to make the very clearly not Nepal, look like Nepal. The movie was filmed in Victoria, Australia – and from a native Australian, the look and feel does have an Australian feel to it.
Considering most of the cast (Bernard Curry, Grace O’Sullivan, Amelia Bishop, Saksham Sharma) are all Australian, and putting on American, French or Indian accents, this is hard to overlook.
There are some ups, I quite liked how invested some of the cast got into their roles, especially Amelia Bishop and her relentless assassin. There is also some okay tension moments as well (going down the ‘ice road’ and then going across the ravine with the crane).
If there was just an ounce of ‘self awareness’ where the characters think they are in a movie, or the like then this would have been SOOO much better, but it wants and tries to be a serious movie the whole time.
There is a trying to be ‘inspirational’ and emotional ending… that isn’t too, that is just stacked on.
Overall
I honestly thought I was going to hate this going in, as sequels tend to be less superior than the original. This is honestly ‘as’ good as the first one… in that its just passable in watching. Don’t expect much, but it is an okay popcorn action flick you don’t have to think to much on.
2.5/5
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