Snowpiercer

In the near future, a chemical released into the atmosphere to combat global warming plunges the planet into a deep freeze and kills most life on earth. The survivors live aboard the Snowpiercer, a state-of-the-art self-sustaining train that circles the earth. Poor passengers are crammed into the tail of the train and treated like second-class citizens while wealthy passengers live decadently in the forward cars, and the train’s brilliant designer, Wilford (Ed Harris), is worshipped as a god. Sick of the injustice, Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) leads his fellow tail passengers in a rebellion to capture the rest of the train, but his disruption of the status quo carries a terrible price.

Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s English-language debut (a loose adaptation of an obscure French graphic novel) is a film that is both easy to be impressed by and easy to take to ask. An ambitious sci-fi allegory, it is at once tense, provocative, well-shot, solidly acted, overlong, ham-handed, and at times downright silly. But whether you love it or hate it, Snowpiercer at least makes an impression.

If nothing else, the film is beautifully shot and scored. From the industrial drudgery of the tail cars to the opulent refinement of the head, each section of the train has an appropriately distinct visual identity. Bong’s fight-scene choreography is as stylish as it is brutal, and there are aesthetic homages to everything from Bioshock to Terry Gilliam. Marco Beltrami’s score is hauntingly beautiful at times but foreboding and discordant when it needs to be.

Though characters here are developed to varying degrees (with varying success), the cast offers some laudatory performances. Evans previously established his action star credibility as Captain America, and here he showcases his range by playing Steve Rogers’ polar opposite. The beginning of the movie sees Curtis as a reluctant leader, bold but principled. When his friends fall by the wayside, however, he dirties his hands and doubles down on his resolve. His background-revealing breakdown toward the end makes for one of the film’s stronger moments. Korean stage vet Song Kang-Ho exudes surly mystique and detached cool as Curtis’ reluctant ally Minsu, a drug-addled security expert with his own agenda. Jamie Bell and Octavia Spencer are around for the ride, but they don’t get enough screen time to flesh out their characters. In opposition, the always-reliable Tilda Swinton seems to be having a blast doing a quasi-Margaret Thatcher impersonation as Wilford’s condescending minister. As the man himself, Harris is effective in a banality-of-evil sort of way, but his closing summation is disappointingly long-winded and contrived.

This speaks to one of the film’s chief flaws: the pacing is uneven and the runtime is padded. The first hour and a half or so are suspenseful and full of urgency, but the film then inexplicably tapers off and very nearly (pun intended) derails. The latter part of the film is so exposition-heavy that it is almost as if Bong expended all of his considerable visual creativity and couldn’t think of a better way to clue the audience in than simply having characters talk at length.

Though not to the same extent, Snowpiercer’s tone is inconsistent as well. This isn’t always a bad thing: Minsu’s sour observations and constant demands for drugs are genuinely amusing. On the other hand, having a cadre of armed goons stop fighting to yell “Happy New Year!” and having Curtis slip on a fish are head-shakers, to say the least. There are several other odd moments – including a segment in a classroom car – that feel off as well.

Sci-fi message movies (Elysium, After Earth, etc.) are bountiful, but movies of any genre that temper a message with a healthy dose of complexity and ambiguity are not. For that reason alone, Snowpiercer is worth your time. Look past the length and loquaciousness and enjoy the ride.

8/10