Let's play Count the Hatchets.
I often gauge the quality of a movie on how much it keeps me from breathing. The death of brain cells from lack of oxygen might play into that, but this is not a self-diagnosis of brain damage. To get lost in a movie so deeply so as to forget to do such an involuntary action as taking a breath is a hell of a thing to experience. It's a reminder that you're watching something special, maybe even important.
Snowpiercer is special. Usually when a movie captivates me so fully, it happens midway through. Peckinpah's Straw Dogs stopped my breathing in its final act as Dustin Hoffman defends his domicile from the horde of angry drunken Englishmen. The Evil Dead remake of 2013 had a similar effect. The original Old Boy's famed hallway fight didn't even let me blink. Intensity that locks you in and refuses to release you until it decides--that's what these movies share. That's what Snowpiercer has. And a lot more.
Snowpiercer is the marriage of South Korean film sensibilities and French graphic literature. Director Bong Joon-ho, best known for his monster-movie-with-a-message The Host, extracts some fine performances from Chris Evans, Octavia Butler, and Jamie Bell. All of whom play passengers damned to the back of the train carting the remnants of humanity for eternity. Song Kang-ho, lead from The Host, and Go Ah-sung portray a father-daughter pair of drug addicts. Their relationship is genuine and heartwarming without verging onto the sentimental. The strongest performance by far comes from the villainous mouthpiece for the front of the train--the upper crust of society--played by Tilda Swinton. She brings a religious zeal to her character that really drives home the idea that there's a spiritual necessity for an established class system.
It is in this class system we find our strongest conflict: back vs. front, lower class vs. upper class. Out of this conflict, we get some mesmerizing fight sequences. The progression almost plays out like a video game: the ragtag group of caboose dwellers must make their way through several train cars, each one with a different purpose and aesthetic. Their first destination? A prison car. The next? The water treatment car. The further up the line, the cleaner and brighter the cars get. The contrast between rear and front emphasize that the front folk live in a facade, completely oblivious to the plight of the rear.
The first push towards the front immediately reminded me of Old Boy's hallway fight: tight quarters and improvised weapons. Only here, the close quarters are emphasized with tight shots convulsing with the train rumble and the desperate push towards control. Here's where I stopped breathing. The tension builds as we see the characters go through a routine we've already seen play out twice. We know things are a little different as they've dragged barrels out from the rear. When the timing is right, the revolt goes off like a short fuse.
There is some philosophical meat to chew on, and nothing terribly subtle. Thinly-veiled allusions to order and necessary placement appear as if they're meant for meditation but in truth feel more like glorified elements of foreshadowing. That's not to say that they're intellectually unstimulating. In spite of their overt presentation, the ideas of class and order are expressed in bleak but uncertain terms. In keeping with a dystopian spirit, those in control may be brutal but not completely malevolent; they believe in order and its need to keep things in line. It's hard to sympathize with those at the top, but we're not meant to.
In accordance with the Netflix method of rating movies, I give Snowpiercer four stars ( * * * * ), meaning, "I really liked it."
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