4 out of 5

Directed by: Bong Joon-ho

Sci-fi flicks like ‘Snowpiercer’ can’t help taking some notes from the genre giants that came before – particularly, in this case, Brazil.  But thanks to the inventive premise of its comic source and Joon-ho’s patient handling of pacing and characters, ‘Snowpiercer’ is able to overcome the pitfall of being described, simply as “like” film x, y or z.  It takes a while to get there, but that path is never not enjoyable and compelling, and once it hits that turning point where it becomes its own film – about halfway through – you know you’re witnessing the kind of movie that deserves to be disseminated to as many viewers as possible.  So: in the future, global warming makes the world unstable enough to merit the global release of a chemical that ends up bringing forth, essentially, an ice age.  To the rescue comes Wilford: an engineer who has seen his dream of a world-spanning railroad come to fruition, upon which runs ‘Snowpiercer,’ a self-sustaining train which now holds the world’s population, with the upper classes in the front of the train, the lower classes in cramped quarters in the back.  Inevitably, those in the rear quarters will rise and rise again; a previous attempt to storm the front was led by John Hurt’s Gilliam, who now mentors the current revolt leader, Chris Evans’ Curtis.  And that revolt is what we’re watching in ‘Snowpiercer,’ one train car at a time.  Along the way we pick up security expert Namgoong (Song Kang-Ho) and run into Wilford mouthpiece Mason, played with wonderful cheekiness by Tilda Swinton.  The movie somewhat hammers its themes in a little too heavily, making the ending perhaps predictable, but when that midpoint and beyond allows our characters to blossom – Evans and Kang-Ho filling the silent and goofy hero roles, respectively, with immense depth – the endpoint becomes just another part of the journey.  And that journey is what sold me: most of these break in / break out flicks spend a lot of time on one portion, than zip through the rest, but ‘Snowpiercer’ proceeds at a measured pace: the runtime of the film matches, for the most part, how deep into the train they are.  However, perhaps limited by time/budget constraints or the source material, the construction of the train feels somewhat illogical and never really sinks in as the full-world environment it’s supposed to be, but the sets are still compelling, and Joon-ho’s creative framing keeps the narrow passageways continually visually interesting.

‘Snowpiercer’ doesn’t necessarily delve as deeply conceptually as some other films from the genre, but for all of the bluster its setup could have provided, the movie appropriately sits back and lets us be thrilled by the journey, and by the bit-by-bit reveals of our leads.  Every aspect of it feels in sync to be the movie that it is; it deserves the praise it’s getting, and best of all, I suspect it will stand the test to be something you can view and appreciate multiple times.