Ice Road: Vengeance review – Neeson’s Nepalese shootout in Walhalla, Victoria

If you were looking for a location for a brutal action sequence, it’s unlikely that the tiny Victorian tourist village of Walhalla would make the list. Established during the gold rush of the 1860s, its historic past and scenic location deep in an isolated valley has made the one-street mining town popular with sightseers and travellers in recent years.

So what’s Liam Neeson doing there gunning down a bunch of crooked Nepalese police officers in Ice Road: Vengeance? It’s a long story.

The Ice Road (2021) was one of the better films to come out of Neeson’s direct-to-streaming phase of his action movie career. The story of trucker Mike McCann (Neeson) who finds himself driving across a whole lot of frozen and dangerous territory to rescue a group of trapped miners, it was a riff on the classic Wages of Fear only with more gunplay and a killer pet rat.

Sequel? Why not – especially with writer / director Jonathan Hensleigh and Neeson back for round two.

Ice Road: Vengeance – cliffhanger

Ice Road: Vengeance begins with Mike deciding he can’t spend all his spare time hanging off the side of a cliff – it’s time to fulfil his dead brother’s last wish and scatter his ashes on Mt Everest. One quick flight to Nepal later (with a brief pause in a public toilet to shift his brother’s ashes from the urn into something they’ll allow on a plane) and Mike is on a bus with a collection of actors who might seem just a little bit familiar to Australian audiences.

While Mike’s guide Dhani (Fan Bingbing) is clearly his co-star, and the plot kicks off when a collection of shady types make a move to kidnap local Vijay (Shaksham Sharma), it’s the rest of the bus crew that Australian viewers will find themselves drawn to. Is that Bernard Curry playing a professor?

With former Neighbours star Grace O’Sullivan as his daughter? At least Geoff Morell gets to use his Aussie accent as the NZ bus driver Spike – even the local thugs (including Mahesh Jadu and Amelia Bishop) are played by Australian actors.

Exactly why this is the case for a film clearly set in Nepal is a mystery to be solved later, as the bus rumbles through the lowlands and the plot – which involves an evil takeover of a rural village by ruthless business types not afraid to murder anyone in their way – ticks along. And then they arrive at a small village and anyone who’s ever visited Walhalla will suddenly find it extremely difficult to believe they’re still in Nepal.

Ice Road: Vengeance – Australian co-production

Despite large parts of this being filmed overseas, Ice Road: Vengeance turns out to be an Australian co-production; the kind of film that’s Australian enough to qualify for local awards despite not being set here and with none of the cast actually playing Australians.

It’s not Neeson’s first time here either. He recently filmed the middling spy thriller Blacklight in Canberra and Melbourne’s Docklands, so this is probably enough for us to claim him as an honorary Australian if he ends up being nominated for an Academy Award for The Naked Gun.

The scene that takes place in Walhalla is what tips this over into action territory, as a bunch of crooked cops try to grab Vijay and it all kicks off once their scheme is uncovered. The idea of filming a big action scene in Walhalla is a decent one: as the town is basically one street, trying to escape when your bus is down the far end and the crooked cops have sealed off the entrance should provide some solid opportunities for excitement.

Unfortunately, it turns out that big action set pieces are not this film’s strong point. It does improve from there – returning to filming in Nepal for the later driving sequences does add some nice scenery, and having the surviving bus crew have to deal with technical problems along with shootouts varies things up enough to keep it all interesting.

But the action remains hit and miss, and for every decent fight there’s an unconvincing car chase.

Ice Road: Vengeance – bus repairs

It’s probably not a good sign when the most interesting moment in an action movie comes when a bunch of bus passengers have to repair their vehicle using parts salvaged from a bunch of wrecks at the bottom of a cliff. But there’s an awareness here that – in this film at least – Neeson is more convincing as an old trucker than a ruthless killing machine, and these scenes play to his strengths.

Now he’s 73 it’s fair enough to ask: is Ice Road: Vengeance Liam Neeson’s final action movie? Probably not: he’s attached to a number of upcoming projects that sound various levels of action-packed, including The Mongoose, in which he plays a character named Ryan ‘Fang’ Flanagan so it’s unlikely to be a rom-com.

But his recent comedy success in the Naked Gun sequel, plus his aforementioned age, suggests that his run as an action star – coming on 20 years now, since the surprise hit Taken – could end at any moment. In which case, Ice Road: Vengeance will wrap things up more with a whimper than a bang, despite the many, many bangs that take place during it.

As an action film it’s largely serviceable, though a few scenes, including one involving a booby-trapped shack, are better than you might expect (action fans can add half a star to the rating). The real value here is all the elements we’re not meant to focus on, whether they’re the all-Aussie supporting cast or the always-interesting scenery they’re driving past.

Walhalla’s never looked better than when Liam Neeson’s shooting holes through it.

Ice Road: Vengeance is available on Prime Video from 3 September 2025. Watch the trailer.

Discover more screen, games & arts news and reviews on ScreenHub and ArtsHub. Sign up for our free ArtsHub and ScreenHub newsletters.