Liam Neeson must be tired of coming to the rescue by now. He’s been in so many Taken films that by now his ‘very particular set of skills’ are totally Taken for granted.
And his upcoming thriller The Ice Road isn’t even the first time in recent memory that we’ve seen him braving alpine conditions on a mission (that would be 2019’s Cold Pursuit). The Ice Road is currently trucking its way into cinemas around Australia, a release that is somewhat complicated by almost every Australian city facing some degree of coronavirus lockdowns.
But never fear: if any movie star can plow their way into cinemas despite the odds, it’s Neeson, and here he’s playing a heroic truck driver set on rescuing a crew of diamond mine workers. Laurence Fishburne is one of the brave fellow truckers who chips in, trying to save lives after an explosion traps 26 men beneath Manitoba ice.
All those sound effects of the ice crackling and snapping in the trailer below tell us we’re in for a tense time, with Neeson and co. racing to make it off a crumbling bridge. Hearing his Northern Irish accent promise “we’re coming, just hang on” is pretty comforting, though.
It’s all somewhat reminiscent of a pair of terrific truck-driving, nerve-jangling classic films: black-and-white French thriller The Wages of Fear and William Friedkin’s 70s remake Sorceror. Equally difficult to find, both movies concern a crew of truck drivers traversing dangerous roads with explosive cargo that could send them sky-high at any moment.
Yet despite those older influences, something about this movie feels deeply 90s to me—I’m talking Cliffhanger, Dante’s Peak, all that comfy disaster-action stuff. The Ice Road seems like the kind of thing you would find on a beach rental’s shelf of old Penguin paperbacks and VHS tapes and be like ‘huh, Laurence Fishburne? This looks fun and diverting, I’ll watch that’. In a good way, hopefully.
