Liam Neeson on Big Rigs, Driving The Ice Road, and Star Wars

| June 24, 2021 |

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Liam Neeson in The Ice Road — *Photo: Netflix*

Liam Neeson has a uncomplicated test he does to see if a script is working for him when he kickoff reads it. "It's a cup of tea exam I exercise," says the 69-year-former Irish actor. "If I become to page five and I think, oh, I must put the kettle on for a cup of tea, that's non a good sign. Just occasionally I'll get a script, like The Water ice Road , where I was able to end it. It felt that good."

The Water ice Road is Neeson's latest film, arriving this week on Netflix, and it continues his career'due south somewhat improbable second act as an action hero. Neeson stars here every bit Mike McCann, a trucker who is 1 of several drivers recruited to transport iii large, heavy drills to a remote northern Canada mine in order to free miners trapped in a collapse.

To get there on time, McCann and the others must drive their 18-wheelers over the region'south treacherous water ice roads — highways literally made of ice that has frozen over the surface of vast lakes, with annihilation from a particularly strong sun to a slightly abrupt plow likely to make the ice crack and plunge the big rigs into the mortiferous cold water beneath.

Mike is accompanied in his truck past his brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas), an Republic of iraq veteran who'south a genius with engines but who suffers from aphasia, while team leader Jim Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne) drives the second rig. Backside the wheel of the third is Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), whose brother is trapped in the mine, accompanied by insurance agent Varnay (Benjamin Walker). The crew soon discovers that non all the obstacles stacked against them are coming from the ice below.

The Ice Road was written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, who directed the 2004 version of The Punisher but is more than widely known for screenplays like Armageddon , Die Hard with a Vengeance and the original Jumanji .

"I practise love writers, I always did," says Neeson. "I knew Jonathan Hensleigh as a writer, he's also a good director, and I idea, okay, we've got Laurence Fishburne, we've got a lovely extra called Bister Midthunder that I was in a little scene with in The Marksman , so I knew Amber a fiddling chip. So this was like, 'Yeah, I desire to be involved in this, big time.'"

Although the civilisation of ice drivers is not necessarily something a lot of people would know about, Neeson says that he stuck primarily to what was in the script and didn't practice a lot of outside research on his own to play the role.

"The script is the foundation for me," he affirms. "I know there was, or there is a reality TV show nearly ice truckers. I watched a couple of those, only [it was mostly] just being in that location with these amazing 18-wheeler trucks that the Kenworth organization were boggling in renting to united states and were of enormous help."

Long before he was an histrion of any annotation, Neeson really had a job every bit a truck driver — simply the vehicle he drove dorsum and so was nothing like the rigs y'all see in The Ice Road .

"I was a forklift truck driver in the Guinness bottling plant," he recalls. "Bully job, actually, I loved it. But they were small-scale — Lansing Bagnall, I think, was the visitor that made these forklift trucks. These xviii-wheeler Kenworths, they're monsters — very sensitive, but beautiful monsters. They are big, human. They're the other major important characters in the film."

The massive Kenworths, which are decked out with cabins that Neeson says are "the size of small New York apartments" are indeed three boosted members of the cast. Neeson was given instruction by experts from the Kenworth company in the art of handling the massive rigs, which were driven on existent water ice roads during the movie's production. "Actually being on the water ice, which then was about thirty to 40 inches thick — so it was adequately safe, but still scary — and driving these things was an amazing feel."

Neeson says he went out on the ice in the rig "two or iii times" with a Kenworth driver. "Listen, I'm not an expert," the actor explains, "but I roughly knew what to do, and could change the gears, and when to change the gears."

One of the dangers of driving on the ice roads are pressure waves, which is the footing of one particularly harrowing sequence in the film.

"If these trucks go as well fast, it creates these pressure waves underneath the water ice that when they hit the reverse shore, they bounciness back and buckle the water ice," Neeson says. "The drivers, if they're going too fast, hit this ice, and they go down, and they die. That happens quite regularly on these ice roads. And then we had to drive at a particular speed and stay within that speed limit."

Much of the driving during the scenes in the movie was handled by stunt drivers hidden in a compartment below the cab, freeing the actors upwardly to pretend to drive in the cabins, which were also the setting for some brutal fight scenes.

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Because of the space afforded long-booty drivers in the Kenworth cabs, Neeson says that filming shut-contact fight scenes in the trucks was not equally difficult as one might expect. "The space could concur a minimum crew, including the director of photography, the camera operator, the focus puller, the director, and two actors, and nosotros weren't cramped," he says. "Nosotros were able to get incredible shots over our shoulders, and so that we could run into this expansive water ice. There was no CGI there at all, it was real."

The driving sequences for The Water ice Road were in fact filmed on Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, on existent water ice roads and in freezing temperatures, and Neeson recalls shooting one sequence in which his character is forced to jump into a hole that has emerged in the ice, plunging into the frigid waters beneath.

"At one point something happens, and I take to dive into this icy h2o where the ice has been broken to try and save someone," says Neeson. "Nosotros had dry out suits on underneath our costumes, but no gloves, and we had to exist under the surface of the water for a good 10 to 12 seconds, so that the level of the surface of the water was all the same, and then we pause through information technology."

Neeson continues, "I was belongings my fellow thespian underneath [the h2o], but all I could call up about were the victims of the Titanic, how quick their deaths must take been. Because we were told by the experts before we did our scene that even though we accept dry suits on, you accept to command your breath. You lot have possibly 45 seconds to 60 seconds, and if you don't control your breath, expiry is imminent."

Still, while Neeson says that interim in real and fifty-fifty dangerous weather is much dissimilar from working in a mostly digital environment — like, say, a Star Wars movie — he besides concedes that every effort is fabricated to minimize the take chances and discomfort for him and the other cast members.

"Listen, we're actors," he says. "One hundred yards away they built a hut. They had a huge hot tub. Once we completed the scene, we dashed over there and just dove into this hot water, costumes, everything on, the rest, and sat for 20 minutes."

Even with that tiny peek behind the pall of simply how a flick similar The Ice Road is made, the endeavor to make the movie seem every bit realistic as possible — from the location shooting to the giant trucks, to Neeson jumping into frigid water — is a far cry from the digitally created spectacles we've been watching for a quarter century now.

And speaking of digitally created spectacles, we'd exist remiss if we didn't spend our final moment or 2 with Neeson asking him most Star Wars . It's been 22 years since he appeared as Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace alongside Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And even though the latter is returning every bit Obi-Wan in a highly anticipated show of his own, Neeson insists he doesn't know of any plans to bring dorsum Qui-Gon, every bit a Forcefulness ghost or otherwise.

Neeson says that even in the Episode I days, George Lucas never broached the subject of doing something more with Qui-Gon. "In a word, no, admittedly not," he says. "I haven't seen George for years. God dearest him, he sends me a Christmas carte every yr since we did the first one. But no, I heard Ewan was doing the spinoff series, just I haven't been approached."

The Ice Road premieres on Netflix this Friday, June 25.