The Ice Road (2021)

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh. Starring Liam Neeson, Marcus Thomas, Benjamin Walker, Amber Midthunder, Laurence Fishburne, Matt McCoy, Matt Salinger, Holt McCallany, Martin Sensmeier. [PG-13]

After a methane explosion traps a couple dozen Canadian miners, trucker Neeson, his mentally-disabled brother (Thomas), and three others embark on a rescue mission by traversing perilous ice roads to get wellheads to the collapsed mine before the workers run out of oxygen. Not exactly Wages of Fear (or, for that matter, Ice Road Truckers: The Movie), this rote action thriller fails to elevate the pulse at any point, and is incapable of making the journey more meaningful than a thirty-minutes-or-less-or-it’s-free pizzeria promise. There’s a sibling relationship on the page, but nothing about the dialogue or performances reflects this; indeed, it’s the kind of picture where you don’t root for heroics, but instead just want to see the cartoonishly loathsome bad guys get it in the end, which can’t come soon enough. The periodic use of digital effects looks embarrassingly phony. Suffers from severe freezer burn—pitch it.

32/100