Ice Road, with Liam Neeson, homage to The Wages of Fear (review)

A snowy action film broadcast this evening on TF1, for the first time free to air.

A diamond mine collapses in the Canadian Far North and traps nearly thirty miners. To lead a perilous rescue mission, Jim Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne) hires Mike McCann (Liam Neeson), an experienced truck driver. They will lead a convoy which will take the “ice road”, a frozen and unstable ocean which covers the almost 500 km of Lake Winnipeg. In addition to bad weather and mechanical damage, there is a series of mysterious attacks, which prove that someone has no interest in this rescue taking place….

The special evening Liam Neeson on Sunday evening on TF1 will it be worth the detour? After The PassengerA act in the vein of Nonstop by Jaume Collet-Serra, but this time taking place on board a train, the Irish actor will be at the heart ofIce Road, at the controls of a truck launched at high speed on the ice. Here is our review, originally published for its theatrical release, during summer 2021.

Liam Neeson: “The Passenger is a bit like Non-Stop, but on a train”

Screenwriter ofA day in hell, Jumanji Or RockJonathan Heinsleigh moved to directing in 2004 with The Punisherfollowed since by Welcome to the jungle And Bulletproof gangsterreleased directly on DVD in France.

His fourth feature is entitled to the big screens here, although available on Netflix on the other side of the Atlantic. He takes us to the Canadian Far North where, after the collapse of a diamond mine which traps 30 men underground, three experienced truck drivers (two men and a woman, played by Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne and Amber Midthunder) will try to transport the equipment necessary to rescue these minors to the site. An expedition where they put their own lives on the line as it involves driving on the ice road – which gives the film its title – covering almost the entirety of Lake Winnipeg and threatening to melt at any moment.

This tribute assumed to Wages of Fear by Clouzot works perfectly in all the scenes of pure action, suspense on ice. Unfortunately, Heinsleigh wanted to add a story of bad guys – obviously bad – owners of this mine who, with the help of their bad insurance company – obviously bad – will do everything so that the miners die without revealing the deal that they had done to some of them to gain profitability by putting their lives in danger. These chases, seen and re-watched much more spectacularly, spoil in the final straight the tension and the clever twists and turns of the first part. Damage.

Liam Neeson: “Thanks to Non-Stop, I now know how to fight in an airplane toilet”