Better than Expected
Summary
Ice Road: Vengeance has a generic evil developers plot however, there are some solid action scenes and I liked the location and some of the characters too. Not a classic by any means, but entertaining enough and arguably better than the first film.
Plot: Mike travels to Nepal to scatter his late brother’s ashes on Mt. Everest. When Mike and his mountain guide encounter mercenaries on a tour bus, they are forced to fight to save themselves, the passengers, and the local villagers’ homeland.
Review: I don’t even remember the first Ice Road movie which came out a few years ago, so I think we were all surprised when the trailer was released for Ice Road: Vengeance a while back.
Liam Neeson returns as Mike McCann, who journeys to Mount Everest to scatter the ashes of his brother. Unfortunately when he arrives in Nepal he stumbles upon evil developers who want to build a dam and take away the land of the local villagers. Anyone who gets in their way is dispatched… until Mike arrives and decides to take out the trash.
I had pretty low expectations for this movie, but I’d be lying if I said I hated it. I always enjoy Liam Neeson in action movies and Vengeance has some decent set-pieces and really hateful villains. I especially loved to hate Jeet played to perfection by Amelia Bishop however, she deserved a more satisfying death than what she got.
It’s well paced and cool to see an action movie set in this locale as it’s something a little different. There are sadly a few CG/greenscreen moments and the characters are mostly one note, but I loved Fan Bing Bing as Dhani. She could take care of herself in a fight, but was just a really appealing character too.
There are several fight scenes and I found myself far more emotionally involved than I should have been, literally throwing stuff at the screen. I hate you, Jeet.
Overall, Ice Road: Vengeance was nowhere near as bad as I expected and it has some solid action scenes with really nasty villains too. They were total cartoon bad guys but sometimes that’s all we need where we can spend the movie looking forward to them getting what they deserve. This is hardly classic stuff, but like most of Liam Neeson’s recent output it works on a rainy Saturday evening with some pizza and beer.