Snowpiercer (2013)
Rated R for violence, language, and drug content
Score: 4 out of 5
Thanks to the success of his thriller Parasite last year, everybody now wants a piece of Bong Joon-ho. Mainstream Western audiences and critics who've been sleeping on him for years are now realizing that he is damn good at fusing nail-biting thrills, dark humor, and satire of modern class relations. Meanwhile, over in my corner of film fandom with all the horror and action geeks, we're just smiling and telling everyone "join the club!" Before Parasite, Snowpiercer was supposed to be Bong's breakthrough Western hit, a dystopian sci-fi action movie and Korean-American co-production based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige and boasting an all-star cast led by Captain America himself, Chris Evans. Unfortunately, despite rave reviews, it got shit all over by Harvey Weinstein because he thought that American audiences were morons who wouldn't appreciate its message, and so, while it was a hit internationally, it was doomed to become a cult item among movie nerds in the US, at least until it got remade for the TNT network as a TV series.
And that's a damn shame, because all the people praising this movie when it came out? They were right. Snowpiercer is an intense action flick whose pacing isn't breakneck, but which still feels as though it's constantly pressing forward just like its main characters, all while having plenty of big ideas that it deftly explores in the kind of manner that only a dystopian sci-fi movie really can. It made great use of its setting to deliver some creative, standout action scenes, all while making the titular train feel as authentic a setting as any other, its assorted quirks interacting with the characters and their mission in various ways. The production values are outstanding for a smaller film like this, conveying the madness of its bleak dystopian world on only a fraction of the budget of many similar Hollywood films, while the cast is outstanding, especially Evans going well outside his comfort zone as the protagonist. All told, whether you're in the mood for some bone-crunching action or "big idea" science fiction, Snowpiercer is your ticket to ride.
The film takes place in 2031, seventeen years after an effort to stop climate change by dispersing aerosols into the atmosphere wound up working a bit too well and... well, this ain't called Snowpiercer for nothing. The last remnants of the human race live aboard a high-tech train powered by a miraculous, experimental engine designed by the billionaire industrialist Wilford, capable of cutting through the snow and ice on a track that wraps around the entire globe. The passengers are organized along class lines, with the poor herded into the tail section, the rich living further up, and Wilford residing in his personal quarters by the engine, ruling all of human civilization like a king. Living in the tail section sucks: they subsist on protein blocks made from ground-up bugs, some of the older passengers are missing limbs because of the cannibalism that went on in the first few months of the train's journey, and children are regularly abducted by the authorities to be taken to the front for purposes that are even worse than what you're probably thinking. Naturally, everybody in the tail section wants a piece of the front, but every attempt at a revolt has failed... until one Curtis Everett, alongside his friend Edgar and their father figure Gilliam, decide to give it another go.
The result is a beast of an action flick that is structured as much like a video game as you can possibly expect. Every train car that the protagonists pass through feels almost like a video game level, starting in the tail section and going all the way to the front, with each of them having a slew of unique obstacles to overcome ranging from puzzles (one character's main purpose is to hack the control panels on the doors) to goons to unique combat environments to even a few mini-bosses in the form of various authority figures. The fights are extremely creative, ranging from epic, large-group battles to hand-to-hand fistfights, with special emphasis given to the melee battles owing to the scarcity of ammunition aboard the train. One of the highlights came midway through the film when the army of revolutionaries is confronted by an army of guards wielding hatchets, with a twist thrown in once the train goes through a tunnel, initially putting the guards (equipped with night-vision goggles) in an advantageous position until the revolutionaries learn how to improvise. This may not be up to the level of something like John Wick, and occasionally it has a bit too much of the shaky-cam that was all too prevalent in the late '00s and early '10s, but the fights here, from setup to follow-through, were all gripping. For a film without a big Hollywood budget, the train and the wasteland around it also looked and felt remarkably impressive, especially with the often-subtle manner in which the train cars shifted as they traveled along the track; this did not feel like a static set. The structure also affords viewers an up-close look at just how the Snowpiercer and its society function, as the protagonists have to journey through the prison, the water processing facilities, the hydroponic farms, a school, and the living quarters and recreation areas of the upper class on their way to Wilford's engine, producing world-building that felt organic and served the plot structure while the surroundings went from gritty to sleek. This may be some fairly "soft" science fiction, but it was built in such a way that I was able to fully believe in it no matter how crazy it got.
And oh, did it get crazy. I've seen this film described as "Terry Gilliam's BioShock", not just in terms of some of the aesthetic touches (the train's bullet-like, Art Deco-styled engine being just the start) but also in terms of the pathologies of the society it takes place in. Nobody on the train is depicted as safe from Wilford's madness. The poor at the back of the train live in squalor, obviously, but things get really interesting when we get to the front cars and see an elite that reveres Wilford as a philosopher-king to frankly disturbing degrees, most notably in the bit where the heroes go through a school and witness a lesson plan devoted to hailing Wilford as the savior of humanity. Many of them are addicted to a drug called kronole that's made from industrial waste. Slowly but surely, over the course of the film Wilford is established not just as a tyrant but as an evil version of Willy Wonka or Elon Musk, an eccentric industrialist whose decision to build a train as an ark upon which humanity can survive is portrayed not as a spark of genius but as a sign of a very disturbed man who wishes to be king -- or more. By the time we finally meet him, we've been primed to anticipate the face of evil, and Ed Harris does not disappoint. He may only appear at the end of the film, but the mix of his slovenly nature, casual dress, and detachment from humanity make for a chilling presence, like if The Dude from The Big Lebowski was an amoral villain with a God complex. While the surface-level class politics of this film are the part everybody immediately notices at first glance, I think that the more interesting subtext here concerns how we as a society revere "great men" of business and industry to a fault, be they the robber barons of a hundred years ago or the tech gurus and real estate moguls of today -- and, without spoiling anything, the equal but opposite tendency among left-wing activists to rally around people promising revolution. It may not cut as deep as Parasite, but both films are still clearly Bong's work.
When it comes to the cast, anyone who's seen the Captain America movies knows that Chris Evans can do a lot more than look handsome, wholesome, and charming while kicking ass, and this was one of the first signs of his range as an actor. Curtis is a man who has been emotionally scarred by the things he's seen in the tail end of the train and had to do in order to stay alive for the last seventeen years, and he does not mince words or play around as he leads the passengers to freedom, taking many personal losses that just compel him to keep fighting. Song Kang-ho as Namgoong, the drug-addicted security specialist who starts out locked up in prison, is perhaps the most idealistic figure in the film, somebody who realizes, even moreso than Curtis and Gilliam, that the entire system that Wilford has built is completely screwed and wishes not to take over the train, but to escape from it with his daughter. Surrounding them, we get a who's who of character actors like Tilda Swinton as Wilford's elitist and equally eccentric lieutenant Mason, Octavia Spencer as the mother Tanya who joins the revolution to save her kidnapped son, Jamie Bell as Curtis' best friend Edgar, Alison Pill as an extremely perky schoolteacher, and John Hurt as the grandfatherly preacher of revolution Gilliam, all of them turning in outstanding performances that further ground the seemingly outlandish world that the film takes place in. And with a lot of moments in between the action where the characters are traversing the train, they all get a lot of room to develop themselves as people, with even the minor characters all having interesting personalities that make them compelling to watch.
The result is a beast of an action flick that is structured as much like a video game as you can possibly expect. Every train car that the protagonists pass through feels almost like a video game level, starting in the tail section and going all the way to the front, with each of them having a slew of unique obstacles to overcome ranging from puzzles (one character's main purpose is to hack the control panels on the doors) to goons to unique combat environments to even a few mini-bosses in the form of various authority figures. The fights are extremely creative, ranging from epic, large-group battles to hand-to-hand fistfights, with special emphasis given to the melee battles owing to the scarcity of ammunition aboard the train. One of the highlights came midway through the film when the army of revolutionaries is confronted by an army of guards wielding hatchets, with a twist thrown in once the train goes through a tunnel, initially putting the guards (equipped with night-vision goggles) in an advantageous position until the revolutionaries learn how to improvise. This may not be up to the level of something like John Wick, and occasionally it has a bit too much of the shaky-cam that was all too prevalent in the late '00s and early '10s, but the fights here, from setup to follow-through, were all gripping. For a film without a big Hollywood budget, the train and the wasteland around it also looked and felt remarkably impressive, especially with the often-subtle manner in which the train cars shifted as they traveled along the track; this did not feel like a static set. The structure also affords viewers an up-close look at just how the Snowpiercer and its society function, as the protagonists have to journey through the prison, the water processing facilities, the hydroponic farms, a school, and the living quarters and recreation areas of the upper class on their way to Wilford's engine, producing world-building that felt organic and served the plot structure while the surroundings went from gritty to sleek. This may be some fairly "soft" science fiction, but it was built in such a way that I was able to fully believe in it no matter how crazy it got.
And oh, did it get crazy. I've seen this film described as "Terry Gilliam's BioShock", not just in terms of some of the aesthetic touches (the train's bullet-like, Art Deco-styled engine being just the start) but also in terms of the pathologies of the society it takes place in. Nobody on the train is depicted as safe from Wilford's madness. The poor at the back of the train live in squalor, obviously, but things get really interesting when we get to the front cars and see an elite that reveres Wilford as a philosopher-king to frankly disturbing degrees, most notably in the bit where the heroes go through a school and witness a lesson plan devoted to hailing Wilford as the savior of humanity. Many of them are addicted to a drug called kronole that's made from industrial waste. Slowly but surely, over the course of the film Wilford is established not just as a tyrant but as an evil version of Willy Wonka or Elon Musk, an eccentric industrialist whose decision to build a train as an ark upon which humanity can survive is portrayed not as a spark of genius but as a sign of a very disturbed man who wishes to be king -- or more. By the time we finally meet him, we've been primed to anticipate the face of evil, and Ed Harris does not disappoint. He may only appear at the end of the film, but the mix of his slovenly nature, casual dress, and detachment from humanity make for a chilling presence, like if The Dude from The Big Lebowski was an amoral villain with a God complex. While the surface-level class politics of this film are the part everybody immediately notices at first glance, I think that the more interesting subtext here concerns how we as a society revere "great men" of business and industry to a fault, be they the robber barons of a hundred years ago or the tech gurus and real estate moguls of today -- and, without spoiling anything, the equal but opposite tendency among left-wing activists to rally around people promising revolution. It may not cut as deep as Parasite, but both films are still clearly Bong's work.
When it comes to the cast, anyone who's seen the Captain America movies knows that Chris Evans can do a lot more than look handsome, wholesome, and charming while kicking ass, and this was one of the first signs of his range as an actor. Curtis is a man who has been emotionally scarred by the things he's seen in the tail end of the train and had to do in order to stay alive for the last seventeen years, and he does not mince words or play around as he leads the passengers to freedom, taking many personal losses that just compel him to keep fighting. Song Kang-ho as Namgoong, the drug-addicted security specialist who starts out locked up in prison, is perhaps the most idealistic figure in the film, somebody who realizes, even moreso than Curtis and Gilliam, that the entire system that Wilford has built is completely screwed and wishes not to take over the train, but to escape from it with his daughter. Surrounding them, we get a who's who of character actors like Tilda Swinton as Wilford's elitist and equally eccentric lieutenant Mason, Octavia Spencer as the mother Tanya who joins the revolution to save her kidnapped son, Jamie Bell as Curtis' best friend Edgar, Alison Pill as an extremely perky schoolteacher, and John Hurt as the grandfatherly preacher of revolution Gilliam, all of them turning in outstanding performances that further ground the seemingly outlandish world that the film takes place in. And with a lot of moments in between the action where the characters are traversing the train, they all get a lot of room to develop themselves as people, with even the minor characters all having interesting personalities that make them compelling to watch.
The Bottom Line
I came very close to giving this a 5 out of 5. Snowpiercer is one of the most creative, thoughtful, and entertaining action and science fiction movies of the last decade, a film that's finally getting its due years after the Weinsteins tried to bury it. Whether you're an action junkie, a fan of "thinking man's" sci-fi, or a fan of Parasite who wants to check out Bong Joon-ho's other films, you'll find a lot to like here.
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