Snowpiercer Review

Posted by Alexander Misiti

Snowpiercer (2013) is the latest film by Korean director Joon-ho Bong. He is know for films like The Host (2006) and Mother (2009), both of which I haven’t seen. In fact, I haven’t seen any of his films, so I went into this one with no bias and no real understanding of what it was about. All I knew was that it looked cool.

So after watching it, was it good?

Well, yes and no.

Snowpiercer is about a group of people living on a train that is circling the earth. It’s the future and the world has been completely frozen due to some global warming incident that was never made clear. The plot is simple: the poor people live in the tail of the train while the rich people live in the front. The poor people want to get to the front. Over the course of two hours, they do just that, though it’s not as easy as it sounds. Our hero, played by Chris Evans (who gives yet another wooden performance), leads the group from one car to the next, running into all sorts of trouble along the way.

Everything in Snowpiercer feels held back. There is a lot of violence, but it always cuts away when it gets to the good parts. You’ve got an R rating. USE IT! Also, I can tell the film is trying to tell some kind of message about the class system, but it’s very much on the surface. You won’t have to think about it too much. Then there is the CGI. We see many shots of the train going through snowcapped mountains, but it’s all pretty poor looking. What is this, 1999? Finally, there is a ton of shaky cam in the fight scenes. I don’t need to say anything else about that.

The real stand out performance here is by Tilda Swinton, who plays a henchman of the main baddie (played by Ed Harris). Her character is super zany, yet evil. Her opening performance is so convincing and fun to watch, it’s a shame no other moments in the film match it. For such an oddball character, everyone else seems to be just going through the motions. I wish there were more memorable characters. Hurt and Harris are just collecting their checks and we never really get to know the rest of passengers.

So what are we left with? I was never bored in Snowpiercer. It’s got a good pace, the music is cool, and the cinematography (minus the fights scenes) look great. I felt like it got the job done. But that’s all it did; get the job done. With such an interesting premise, I was expecting to be blown away. I was expecting big twists and a message that would get me thinking. Instead, I got something that would make for a good rental, but that’s about it.

Final Grade: C+