Snowpiercer

Bong Joon-ho's first English film knocks it out of the park. He's a wonderful director who's responsible for The Host and Mother. If you haven't seen either of those, go to Netflix and watch them as soon as you can. Snowpiercer is absurd, heavy-handed, over-the-top, but in all the best ways possible.

Chris Evans plays Curtis, a passenger aboard a train carrying the last known survivors of earth after an experiment to counter global warmer is implemented. The experiment puts the earth into an ice age and all life freezes to death. But everyone aboard this train, which travels around the world's continents once every year, are alive as the last of humanity.

We start out in the back of the train where it's basically a slum. People have worn out clothes, it's dark, dirty. You can almost smell it the rotten stench of it all. And as you head forward through the train you can see a progression of luxury. To say it's a metaphor for class separation and struggle would imply that it's being subtle. Snowpiercer is anything but subtle.

Snowpiercer's world is like a Fox News wet dream. People in the lower class, the back of the train, are almost slaves. Soldiers come by and do head counts, they basically kidnap people to perform tasks for the people in the front of the train. "Oh, you can play violin? Well we need a violinists in a forward car. You're coming with us. Leave your things. No, your wife stays here." And there are brutal consequences if you don't obey the people from the front of the train. Along with a figurehead, in this case played by Tilda Swinton, giving a speech about social order and everyone "belonging in their place."

There's a moment where if it weren't for seeing how crazy some of the politicians can be, I wouldn't have believed how over-the-top Tilda Swinton's character is. Yet as despicable as she is, telling the lowly passengers in the back of the train, eating nothing but manufactured protein bars, that they should be grateful for what they have. So what if you're living in your own filth. You should be happy that we're being gracious enough to allow you to be here at all. It's almost as if Swinton's doing a Michelle Bachmann with a little bit of Hunger Games flair.

Curtis, along with Edgar, played by Jamie Bell, and Gilliam, played by John Hurt, are planning to revolt and march through the cars of the train towards the front to gain control of the engine, which is basically treated as a deity to the people in the front. What ensues is one of the most fantastically brutal uprisings put on screen.

The further along the train Curtis and the others go, the more losses they take. Snowpiercer is unapologetic about how brutal a revolution can be. It doesn't water it down or glorify it. It emphasizes that it could feel futile at times. I wondered at many points in the film what Curtis was going to do once he reaches the front of the train. Is it all going to be worth it in the end? Does the ends justify some of the hard choices he made to get to the front? You can even see it in Curtis's face that he's thinking the same thing.

I really have to praise Bong Joon-ho. He keeps the focus of the film very tight. There's some great world building as we see more and more of the train. The sharp contrast between the front cars and the back cars is jarring. Yet it completely fits within how the separation of classes works today in America.

Joon-ho also never reaches too far. With so many "epics" coming out now, large-scale destruction is losing meaning. It almost seems like the bigger the movie gets, the less we care about what's going on. Snowpiercer keeps the focus on the characters, and allows the action to envelop them instead of just places characters in the middle of a disaster. The use of lighting enhances these great character moments in the middle of these stylized action sequences. Almost none of the action feels unnecessary. Every frame of violence serves a purpose.

I don't think everyone's going to enjoy Snowpiercer. It is incredibly heavy-handed in its political message. At times it does get really weird. Some of the cars further up in the train get a bit too satirical of the upper-class and may seem out of place. And the violence may be a bit too brutal for some. Despite this, Snowpiercer is among my favorite movies of 2014.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!