Rating: D
Dir: Jonathan Hensleigh
Star: Liam Neeson, Marcus Thomas, Laurence Fishburne, Amber Midthunder
Well, we’ve seen them on the TV, so let’s make an exciting action film about their work and mix in some corporate evil greed for spice. Tell you what, let’s get that Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne along for the ride (ho ho!!) and toss the wonderfully named Amber Midthunder too.
The opening shot has a truck pulling in at the end of its run. The cleanest shiniest truck known to man. Ever! So ‘totes realism’ seems not to be their goal…
The backdrop is big mining up the the frozen North. One with a big methane pocket, and methane detectors disabled because of evil capitalism. One with a BIG-BANG! A big bang leaving twenty-six alive, buried underground, with limited air, who can’t be rescued until the methane is tapped off. This in turn requires a 30-ton well head. Sadly this is too heavy to airlift, and so they call on Wishburne and his Ice-Road truckers to deliver three complete packages across rapidly thinning ice. Three complete packages just in case ‘anything bad’ should happen…
So. It’s a rescue mission. Grab the requisite dashboard bobble-head and it’s time to hit the ice, and initially it’s quite cute, silly, full of energy and oddly ‘yee-haw’. Along the way we enjoy some lovely visuals and everything seems to be ticking along nicely as we all start to wonder what on earth… well ice… could possibly go wron….
…oh….
Up to this point I was quite enjoying the wafer-thin flick, whilst wondering quite what the story was going to actually be. And. Oh. Oh dear. It descends (as quickly as a truck through thin ice) into mind-numbing trope, as the evil corporation’s motives slowly surface (pun intended) from a thick soup of tedious improbability and mild stupidity. I can’t recall if any, or how much, hooch I’d consumed, but any amount up to dribbling incoherence wouldn’t have been enough.
I’m not writing any more as it’s not worth the effort, instead I’ll merely transcribe the final line from my notes:
“Not worth the effort – D”
There. Told you so!!