Film Review - Snowpiercer (2014)

Currently available via Video On Demand-

On VOD - "Snowpiercer" - (2014) - Set in the year 2031, Earth has fallen victim to a man-made disaster and is now completely covered in ice.  With the last remnants of humanity aboard a massive, rapidly moving, state-of-the-art train as it circles the planet in perpetual motion, the impoverished dregs and their decadent, elitist oppressors become locked in a deadly revolution.

Chris Evans (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) stars as the leader of the the grimy downtrodden who populate the tail end of the train- living in squalor, cowering to armed guards and fed cold, gelatinous protein bars, he unites the faction in an attempt to overtake the train.  It would be Evans who holds the film together in a haunted, though charismatic turn- he's cemented himself as a leading man and has presence to spare here.  A late film revelation gives the 33-year-old actor a little room to stretch his talents into darker territory and he triumphs.

Song Kang Ho (The Host 2006) co-stars as a drug-addicted, tech-savvy, mystery man who aides our group in their push forward, while Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton) is the buck-toothed orator who acts as an emissary.

Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), Octavia Spencer (The Help), and John Hurt (Hellboy) portray thin stock characters pulled from the dusty shelves of some post-apocalyptic, action movie warehouse and clumsily inserted into the narrative.  Even Ed Harris's (The Rock) involvement is a bit of a choke job.

A much-publicized battle of wills between Director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host 2006) and The Weinstein Company (the film's US distributor) led the movie-loving masses to believe that the South Korean auteur had secured his full cut of the film- it seems Harvey Weinstein wanted 20 minutes of this film cut for American audiences yet lost out after widespread internet outcry.  All things considered, and after watching the film, I still have a hard time believing that this 126 minute film is complete- it's undeniably ambitious and presented with an epic scope, yet brimming with poorly defined characters, marred by a choppily edited narrative and leaves so many avenues and ideas unexplored that it can't possibly be a finished product.  I've heard rumors of a 150+ minute cut but have no solid evidence of this and can only comment on what I paid to see.

What remains is an dark, lumbering, uneven mess with a highly problematic narrative- the experience threatens to collapse under it's own weight at nearly every turn.  The film starts off rather promising but becomes less and less interesting with each plot hole and overly-contrived/outlandish occurrence.  Remember how Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome was a disappointing shambles, continuously spinning it's wheels just when you thought it was about to take off?

The set designs are impressive and there are a few pleasant, albeit weird little moments strewn about, though the film's special effects are all over the map and Marco Beltrami's music is often overbearing.  Potential audiences can expect a handful of bloody skirmishes and shootouts, including one slow-mo-heavy showdown with a horde of axe-wielding bad guys.  Some of the environments that our crew of protagonists pass through for the first time are rather striking while one particular sequence involving a classroom of children is left-field crazy-cool... I wish there had been more inspiration of its nature.

This could have been something special with moderate attention to detail given to its script.  As is, Snowpiercer is a merely passable Sci-Fi venture at best; a topical foray in the genre that (disappointingly) wallows in dumb action movie territory.  Based on a French Graphic Novel ("Le Transperceneige" by Jacques Lob) and adapted for American audiences by a South Korean Director... I'm thinking maybe, just maybe something was lost in translation...

Worth a rental, though maybe not during the colder nights of the year...

7.0 out of 10

Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Ewan Bremner, Ah-sung Ko and Alison Pill
Run-Time: 126 minutes
MPAA: Rated R for violence, language and drug content