Now I had actually seen Snowpiercer earlier on VOD but I felt I didn't really experience the film and when I finally got to see it in cinemas it was a much more rewarding experience.
Snowpiercer is the latest film from Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother) based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige. With Snowpiercer comes a very ambitious film on an epic scale but with a much lower budget than it would seem. It stars Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner, Alison Pill, Korean actors Song Kang-ho and Ko A-sung (who were also father and daughter in The Host) and another actor who I don't want to spoil but plays a very crucial role in the film.
The film follows a team of lower-class citizens on a constantly moving train sheltering the last of the human race after the world was thrown into a new ice age. This ragtag team of revolutionaries attempt to make their way from the back of the train to the front in an attempt to take control of the engine and change the dynamics of class system in place. With Snowpiercer comes a film filled with social commentary, focused on themes and embracing genre. It is a very smartly plotted film full of intense emotions and thought-provoking ideas anchored by committed performances and empathetic characters.
Bong Joon-ho crafts this film with all his mastery of the medium and it is a stunning film. His usual cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong moves the camera with purpose and creates stunning compositions with each frame. The production design fully realises a very unique future almost like a world that Terry Gilliam would visualise except lot darker. The score from Marco Beltrami is quite fantastic and helps the film hit all of it's beats while also driving it forward and giving it time to breathe. This film manages to balance black comedy, social commentary, sci-fi concepts, exhilarating action, tender moments and personal reflection with ease and not once does it feel tonally jarring.
Now this film may be ambitious and fantastically executed but that doesn't come without its flaws. The script is far from perfect and with its focus on themes and ideas it throws a fair bit of logic out the window in order to say what it's trying to. Several of the characters are rather cliché or underdeveloped and though the film itself is quite original especially in execution a lot of the plot is rather predictable and doesn't always have revelations that it thinks it does. But you've got to admire this film for its daring ambition, desire to be more than just spectacle (though it does spectacle well) and it defiance of blockbuster expectations.
Snowpiercer is something rather special when it comes to the types of movie we've been getting lately. It manages to be just as exciting as a blockbuster but also has something to say and something different to bring to the table. Though I don't think it's a masterpiece it's definitely a film I want to breakdown and discuss with people and I think it'll be a very underrated sci-fi gem that I can surprise my friends with. Bong Joon-ho is a very exciting filmmaker full of ambition and boldness; and when you take note of the fact that this film was made for less that a third of the price of most Hollywood blockbusters and manages to surpass most of them in scale and spectacle that is something to admire.
4 out of 5 stars.
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