Snowpiercer (2013), an international production from Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho and a French graphic novel, is a high-speed allegory barreling down the science fiction tracks of genre cinema.
That’s the way I like this brand of filmmaking: with the symbols big, muscular, detailed, and punchy. You either give yourself over to the metaphor, in this case a giant train as a self-contained eco-system traveling through a world plunged into an ice age with passengers segregated into castes and the oppressed poor rising up in revolution, or give up. There’s not much in between.
Think “The Odyssey” as reworked by Karl Marx and set on the Siberian Express, a ferocious end-of-the-world science fiction allegory about class warfare on a perpetual motion train circling the frozen globe. Chris Evans (Captain America himself) is the angry young leader in the dungeon of steerage class battling his way through the train, car by car, to the engine, seeing his fellow revolutionaries cut down by the stormtrooper soldiers as the poor, huddled masses progress through the levels of privilege and decadence.
Tilda Swinton all but steals the film from him as the devoted functionary dedicated to class division and population control through repression and purges, embracing the essence of her character as both live action political cartoon and deluded acolyte of an Oz-like ruler with Darwinian tools. It is the class system of the industrial revolution in microcosm played out as high-concept action movie, and with Bong (Parasite) at the helm, it’s a violent, graphically dynamic journey.
Song Kang-Ho, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Alison Pill, and John Hurt costar.
Rated R
Streams for a limited time on Hulu and on Prime Video
Also on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video
Snowpiercer [DVD]
Snowpiercer [Blu-ray]
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Blu-ray and DVD with a commentary track hosted by Geek Nation film critic Scott Weinberg and featuring William Goss (Austin Chronicle), Drew Mcweeny (Hitfix.com), Jennifer Yamato (Deadline), Peter S. Hall (Movies.com), and James Rocchi (MSN Movies). A second disc features additional supplements: a nearly hour-long French language documentary “Transperceneige: From the Black Page to the Black Screen,” the shorter “The Birth of Snowpiercer,” a piece on ‘The Characters” with actor interviews,” an animated prologue, and addition interviews and concept art galleries.
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