WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Ice Road, now streaming on Netflix.
In The Ice Road, Mike (Liam Neeson) is given the herculean task of joining a crew transporting wellheads to a Canadian mine after a methane explosion traps 26 people down below, leaving them just over a day before oxygen runs out. Three trucks take the pipelines because with this technical redundancy, aka a "bull run," if any one fails, there'll be two other wellheads to use. However, as the journey reaches a perilous impasse on the ice road, the film cracks apart with a generic, predictable twist.
Mike's truck has his brother, Gurty (Marcus Thomas), an Iraqi war vet now suffering mental illness, while the second is driven by Laurence Fishburne's Goldenrod. The final one has a Native American woman, Tantoo (Amber Midthunder), whose brother, Cody, is trapped in the hole in Manitoba, and Varnay (Benjamin Walker), an insurance rep from Katka, the company overseeing the mining project. They have to be careful as they use the ice roads -- actual paths that have been created on frozen northern lakes and are only used in the winter months when the ice is thick enough.
The drivers must maintain just the right speed: go to slow and the ice will crack below them, too fast and pressure waves will destroy the road ahead. But as they slowly make the trek, the film paints Katka in an obvious light. The man managing the project, Sickle (Matt McCoy), is quite shady, and we learn he was cutting corners, paying workers like Cody an extra $100 a day to secretly turn off their methane sensors as he couldn't afford for mining to stop. Sickle needed operations to continue under dangerous conditions to make money, which led to the miners hitting a methane pocket.
The fact Varnay was so adamant to join the truck convoy clearly hinted at his sinister role, which comes full-circle when he puts blame on Tantoo for an accident. When Goldenrod's truck stalls, it's revealed to be filled with gasoline, not diesel. It ends up sinking in the ice with Goldenrod getting caught in the towing cable. Goldenrod orders Tantoo to cut his tether and let him go down with the truck to ensure the other trucks survive. Varnay blames the death on Tantoo, claiming she wanted to increase her share of the mission's payment.
Varnay convinces the gullible Mike and Gurty that Tantoo tampered with Goldenrod's fuel, and they restrain her after she pulls a gun on them. But like clockwork, when the brothers get into one of the cabins, Varnay locks them in. He doesn't want them finding out that Tantoo is innocent, but, more so, he can't let the trucks reach the mine.
Varnay is there to sabotage the mission to prevent the miners from divulging the company's unethical business practices. He takes Tantoo's truck to drop off a cliff while leaving dynamite to blow up the brothers' truck and frame it as a technical error in a poorly executed twist anyone could see from a mile away.
Starring Liam Neeson, Marcus Thomas, Amber Midthunder, Benjamin Walker, Holt McCallany and Laurence Fishburne, The Ice Road is now streaming on Netflix.