“Snowpiercer”
Starring: Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Kang-ho Song, Jamie Bell
Grade: C
The Bible story of the Flood might have had a more direct movie adaptation earlier this year, but “Snowpiercer” is just as much a story about Noah as, well, “Noah.”
In “Snowpiercer,” climate change has made the world an ?uninhabitable tundra, and the only humans left alive are those on board a train that never stops circling the world.
The train is powered by movie magic and a casually mentioned perpetual-motion engine, which would have been a bigger deal if this had been hard science fiction.
In this social justice sci-fi flick, half of the people on the train live in the slum-like tail section, sleeping in crammed bunk beds and eating gelatinous protein bars, while the other half live in the front and eat sushi and soak in hot tubs.
The main character, Curtis (Chris Evans), plans on fighting his way to the front of the train and forcing the train’s owner, Wilford (Ed Harris), to treat everyone equitably.
To this end, he needs the man who designed the train’s security system, a cryogenically frozen ?prisoner named Namgoong ?Minsoo (Kang-ho Song).
During the fight he is aided by wise Gilliam (John Hurt), eager Edgar (Jamie Bell) and Tanya (Octavia Spencer), a mother who has been separated from her child. The main antagonist is Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton), a stiff front-of-the-train bureaucrat with a fondness for shoe metaphors.
The story, which is reminiscent of existing cautionary tales, manages to feel distinct thanks to director Joon-ho Bong’s setting and impressive use of color. The bright yellows and whites worn by the front-of-the-train passengers stand out against the grubby dark rags worn by the back-of-the-train passengers.
The front oppresses the people in the back by subjecting them to the exterior cold, which causes their limbs to freeze and turn blue.
This knack for visual direction continues through the rest of the film, especially during the fight scenes, which are as plentiful and cheesy as a low-budget action movie and keep the film from taking itself too seriously.
However, they overcorrect in the other direction and make it impossible to care for any of the characters onscreen.
As a minor example, characters dying so frequently prevents the audience from growing ?attached to them. On a more ?significant level, people from the front and back of the train both kill liberally and immorally.
Seeing Curtis and his company execute hostages and surrendering guards alienates us and gives us no one to root for.
For a while, the pacing is fast enough to compensate for this, but the film’s last half hour is dominated by philosophical dialogues and plot twists. In the absence of sympathetic faces, this stretch of the movie is numb and exhausting. If this distance is intentional, the tactic is miscalculated. Commentary on the futility and necessity of violent struggle means nothing if the viewer is too bored to hear it.
While the movie is usually pretty to look at — though some of the special effects belong in a ’90s video game, not a 2014 motion picture — and certainly offers a fresh take on dystopias, shallow characterization and uneven pacing ultimately left this critic out in the cold.
