Review of Snowpiercer (2013) by Trevatthemovies — 22 Jul 2014

Snowpiercer feels like the train its title refers to - heavily segmented in style, tone, and theme. Though there are some cinematographic high moments and wonderfully choreographed and intriguingly conceptual fight sequences, most of the film felt flat to me. The steampunk dystopia has become a very tired trend in blockbuster cinema (The Hunger Games, select bits of The Purge 2), and director-screenwriter Joon-ho Bong, instead of offering a new take on the genre, instead chooses to belabor the traditional tropes we have come to expect. Coal-miner chic clothing from the poor? Check. Great Gatsby hedonism and big hair from the rich? Check. And for all the emphasis given to the CGI panoramas of the bleak world of 2032, I would have hoped the effects would not have come off looking quite so...fake.

I have yet to be impressed with a Chris Evans character, and Snowpiercer did not change my mind about him. I have to cut him some slack, though, because the script definitely did not give him many chances to step outside his Captain America comfort zone of grim tension. Ed Harris makes a serviceable mad scientist villain, and Tilda Swinton is satisfactorily Tilda Swinton-y, but no one has much to do in terms of depth and development.

Finally, the plot simply tries to accomplish too much. It's as if Joon made a checklist of all the good trappings of a dystopian/apocalyptic thriller and tried to mash them into a diamond, when it really ends up an underdeveloped, confusing amalgam of climate catastrophe and Elysium social disorder, with a Matrix-style telekinetic savant thrown in for good measure. I can't say I enjoyed Snowpiercer. I can say that it was very exciting: my heart was pounding, my fists were as clenched as Chris Evan's jaw in any given scene. I was thrilled. And I think that's all that Snowpiercer was trying to accomplish.