SNOWPIERCER

There is so much going on in Bong Joon-ho’s SNOWPEIRCER that I feel it is hard to do it justice in a review.  The idea of a perpetual motion train travelling around the world continuously carrying the survivors of an accidental freezing over the world (that happened when combating global warming) as a microcosm of class struggle is a clever one but to fill this idea with great performances, bizarre visuals, and the train as a perfectly realized set piece turns a clever idea into a great, great film.

Ostensibly about a revolution of the poorly treated people in the tail section, the poor, who are abused by the police force working for the wealthy in the front of the train led by the mysterious Wilford, the man responsible for building the train, SNOWPIERCER has a number of great action sequences but they are not the main focus of the film.  A serious Marxists dialectic is at work here and the film does not water it down or throw in too much Hollywood fluff to obscure it.  It helps that this film was not made by a big Hollywood studio.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the main ingredients of this film which is the great performances.  There are a number of good supporting turns by John Hurt, Octavia Spenser, Go Ah-sung, and Ed Harris but they are secondary to three even bigger greater performances.  Chris Evans , who one might write off as a pretty boy Captain America, as the leader of the people from the tail section is given more to do than just action scenes.  A monologue he gives towards the end of the film about why he hates the people in the front of the train and Wilford in particular is amazing.  Tilda Swinton as an evil, duplicitous representative of the front compartment committing all sorts of evil acts and made up with thick glasses and false teeth and a thick Yorkshire accent, and the great Korean actor Song Kang-ho who is his usual inscrutable, slightly menacing, slightly heroic self also chew up the scenery with wild abandon.

This film works because it’s able to do a lot of different things without sacrificing the plot and the flow of the film.  I liked everything about this film – Good meaning, good action scenes, and good visuals (Especially liked how they go from car to car as they head towards the front of the train and the engine and each car is something new like an aquarium, a bathing room, a club with music etc.). Truth is  I don’t think Boon-Joon-ho has ever made a bad film.