Snowpiercer (B- or 2.5/4 stars)
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho's 1st (mostly) English-language motion picture, 'Snowpiercer' is a bold, wonderfully-bizarre, yet flawed fantasy/actioner. In 2031, after an elaborate attempt to quell global warming, scientists accidentally sent Earth into an irreparably frozen wasteland. Everyone & everything outside is dead & the only survivors are on board an enormous, self-sustaining bullet train that speeds continuously around the glacial globe. Passengers are strictly segregated by class, compartmentalized within the train, & it is ruthlessly enforced by the grotesquely fascist "Minister" Mason (Tilda Swinton) & her armed guards. How brutal are Mason's methods? Well, I'll give ya an example: when one of the impoverished 3rd class-ers complains, his arm is inserted into a porthole, frozen, & amputated!
Mason rules with an iron fist, but a rebellion is brewing in the grimy slums in the back of the train, where restless Curtis (Chris Evans, branching out from his Capt. America role), encouraged by the sage, elderly Gilliam (John Hurt), decides to lead a guerrilla force from the back to the front, where the train's enigmatic, mythical inventor, Mr. Wilford (Ed Harris) rules - in mystery - from the engine room. Accompanied by his good friend Edgar (Jamie Bell) & a mother (Octavia Spencer) who is hellbent on finding her little boy who has been abducted from the guards for clandestine reasons, Curtis bribes a drug-addicted security expert (Song Kang-ho), & his drugged-up daughter to open the locked gates separating the train cars by giving them Kronole (the very hallucinogen drug that they're addicted to).
As our protagonists inch forward car-by-car, they bear witness to the self-sustaining ecosystem of the more privileged occupants. i.e., one of their encounters is with a creepily cheerful schoolteacher (Alison Pill); another depicts the various luxuries enjoyed by the elite class (flashy discoteques, lavish day spas, an aquarium, world-class food, etc.). Our ragtag group of heroes will need extra strength, wits, & courage to deal with the hazards that await en route to their ultimate destination ... the engine room. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, can they succeed?
Based on a French graphic novel, 'Snowpiercer' is propelled by Bong Joon-ho's imaginative visuals & dread-building suspense. Bong juggles strong themes/ideas, assured actors, & brilliant fighting sequences; not to mention a savvy, if disgusting use of 'food'. I also liked how unpredictable the journey is (you never know what's around the next corner or which character is going to get killed). 'Snowpiercer' is also a strange film for many reasons, one of them being: it's a relatively big film with a large cast, and yet, the budget is kept to a respectable $40 million and you never leave the train setting -- that makes the movie seem small when it really isn't. Filming in a long, thin corridor could have been repetitive, but the images are always striking & often surprising {jolts galore}.
The many positives of the film (that aforementioned unpredictability, a good performance from Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton's wackadoodle portrayal of Minister Mason, the fascinating set design, some decent action) more than compensate for the heavy-handed, dystopian allegorical moments; including the somewhat unsatisfactory ending. See, the story imparts a pretty bleak view of humanity. I wasn't wild about that. But at least the Korean director went all-out with his vision. I appreciate the moments when our protagonists work together to fight difficult odds. But really, 'Snowpiercer' is a fairly downbeat spectacle where ambitious filmmaking outweighs some plot logic & consistent entertainment. Nifty sci-fi thriller, I'm just not as bowled over by it as some others.
Mason rules with an iron fist, but a rebellion is brewing in the grimy slums in the back of the train, where restless Curtis (Chris Evans, branching out from his Capt. America role), encouraged by the sage, elderly Gilliam (John Hurt), decides to lead a guerrilla force from the back to the front, where the train's enigmatic, mythical inventor, Mr. Wilford (Ed Harris) rules - in mystery - from the engine room. Accompanied by his good friend Edgar (Jamie Bell) & a mother (Octavia Spencer) who is hellbent on finding her little boy who has been abducted from the guards for clandestine reasons, Curtis bribes a drug-addicted security expert (Song Kang-ho), & his drugged-up daughter to open the locked gates separating the train cars by giving them Kronole (the very hallucinogen drug that they're addicted to).
As our protagonists inch forward car-by-car, they bear witness to the self-sustaining ecosystem of the more privileged occupants. i.e., one of their encounters is with a creepily cheerful schoolteacher (Alison Pill); another depicts the various luxuries enjoyed by the elite class (flashy discoteques, lavish day spas, an aquarium, world-class food, etc.). Our ragtag group of heroes will need extra strength, wits, & courage to deal with the hazards that await en route to their ultimate destination ... the engine room. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, can they succeed?
Based on a French graphic novel, 'Snowpiercer' is propelled by Bong Joon-ho's imaginative visuals & dread-building suspense. Bong juggles strong themes/ideas, assured actors, & brilliant fighting sequences; not to mention a savvy, if disgusting use of 'food'. I also liked how unpredictable the journey is (you never know what's around the next corner or which character is going to get killed). 'Snowpiercer' is also a strange film for many reasons, one of them being: it's a relatively big film with a large cast, and yet, the budget is kept to a respectable $40 million and you never leave the train setting -- that makes the movie seem small when it really isn't. Filming in a long, thin corridor could have been repetitive, but the images are always striking & often surprising {jolts galore}.
The many positives of the film (that aforementioned unpredictability, a good performance from Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton's wackadoodle portrayal of Minister Mason, the fascinating set design, some decent action) more than compensate for the heavy-handed, dystopian allegorical moments; including the somewhat unsatisfactory ending. See, the story imparts a pretty bleak view of humanity. I wasn't wild about that. But at least the Korean director went all-out with his vision. I appreciate the moments when our protagonists work together to fight difficult odds. But really, 'Snowpiercer' is a fairly downbeat spectacle where ambitious filmmaking outweighs some plot logic & consistent entertainment. Nifty sci-fi thriller, I'm just not as bowled over by it as some others.