Ice Road: Vengeance

At this point, Liam Neeson's situationship with perilous situations has become a tiresome actioner trope. All the characters, except for Neeson's and Bingbing Fan's, are directly imported from the generic action template guidebook. This could've been tagged a Taken movie, and it wouldn't be any different. And for a film titled "Ice Road," there were hardly any icy roads. I forgot almost everything about the first film except for the name, Neeson's character, and the poster.. so I didn't even realize that the protagonist's brother was dead (lol!). Also, I read that most of this was shot in Australia and not Nepal, which makes it matter even less. Can Liam Neeson do less of these and more of In the Land of Saints and Sinners types with better character depth?

So, let's not talk about the story - you already know what you're getting. "He will hunt them down" is back in business.

The plot is solid but offers no surprises. And that's a shame, because surprise is often what separates a good movie from a mediocre one.

The CGI, however, feels like it's from another planet - and not in a good way.

That planet is cheap and artificial. Take the CGI bus, for example: it's empty, even though it should be full of passengers. The scenes with falling cars look low-budget, and at times it seems like they didn't even film in Nepal - just in front of green or blue screens. The lighting was also off in several scenes.

In the end, the film didn't entertain me. It mostly screamed "bad CGI" again and again.

What a shame.

Well, to start positively: This movie offers nice action with buses, the scenery of Nepal is beautiful, and it has a well-picked and capable cast with Liam Neeson as the lead, and I like Liam Neeson; always did.

But that is not enough to call this a good movie. Everything is just a vehicle for action. That may have worked twenty years ago, but nowadays that's not enough. It's just too superficial and predictable. The character development and their relationships have too little space to allow me to build up any attachment whatsoever. There are some interesting side characters with potential, but they all get killed way too soon. And I'm not talking about the antagonists, which have no depth at all.

So all that remains is the action. It's solid but not overwhelming. There are quite some logic issues that spoil the fun, and the editing is way too fast-paced, sometimes confusing.

This is a routinely staged action movie with superficial characters, with questionable editing and without any surprises.

This movie is way below average. The acting is pathetic...you just laugh (and not because it's a comedy) at how bad the special effects and fight scenes are. Definitely one of, if not the worst Lian Neeson movie ever and it's a shame to waste 2 hours of your life watching something like this.

I don't understand how actors like Liam Neeson accept such roles, because they alone ruin the image they've built up over their entire life.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has been in decline for the last few years and the quality of films is increasingly execrable.

In conclusion, don't waste your time with this movie, it's simply ridiculous.

This film had all the ingredients to be something remarkable, a gripping premise, the raw and treacherous beauty of Nepal's unforgiving roads, and the presence of Liam Neeson, whose performance rarely disappoints. And yet, what could've been a visually stunning and emotionally compelling survival thriller fell flat, entirely due to a poorly written story that disrespected both geography and authenticity.

Instead of leveraging the naturally dangerous terrain of Nepal to drive a more grounded and believable plot, the filmmakers seemed more interested in rushing through implausible sequences. The most jarring offense? Presenting a CGI version of Everest that looked painfully out of place, especially when we know the real mountains are right there, majestic, harsh, and more cinematic than any computer-generated replica.

Even worse, the portrayal of Nepali culture and language was laughable. Random gibberish passed off as "Nepali" only served to insult rather than represent. For those of us who know and love the country, this felt careless, even offensive.

And let's address the elephant in the room: you simply cannot take a bus from Kathmandu and reach Everest in a few hours. The film treats this like a casual weekend trip. It's not just misleading; it's disrespectful to the very people whose land and struggle the movie pretends to showcase.

The only reason I gave this movie 5 stars was because of Liam Neeson. Strip him away, and this wouldn't deserve more than a 2. A spectacular setting wasted on a lazy script and cheap execution.