Snowpiercer (2013, Dir. Bong Joon-ho):
A unique point of view in a big summer movie is hard to come by. That’s not to say that summer movies are devoid of thought, just that all their thoughts tend to be the same: the expected progression from plot point A to climax B, everything sanded down to a marketing-approved sheen, genre conformity prevailing over personality. Nowhere is this more evident than in the action film, with violence presented checkbox-style (hip and ironic, or fun and comic-booky, or indulgent and grotesque). As a result, we’ve all but admitted defeat. All the critiques in the world won’t deny the global box office take of the latest Transformers movie, so why bother? Expectations were set long ago, and Hollywood is only interested in giving you what it thinks we want.
Which is why Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, a curious production with a Korean director, an American star, and a story based on a French comic book, is such a shock to the system. Unlike his celebrated countryman Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), Bong is less about Grand Guignol and more about messing around. His breakthrough film Memories of Murder, in many ways still his best work, turns what could have been another grim Se7en-like hunt for a serial killer into a gumbo of historical drama, slapstick, procedural mystery, and true tragedy. Then there’s The Host, a searing political comedy-cum-family melodrama masquerading as a giant monster movie, in which the real monster is a government ready to gas or lobotomize us all at a moment’s notice — and it turns out to be a gas of a monster movie anyway. Tidy and clean, Bong’s movies are not, but in their playfulness, their restlessness, their subversion and explosion of genre, they stand out.
Snowpiercer, loosely based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, offers Boon the chance to take that playfulness to an international stage. On a frozen uninhabitable future Earth, mankind’s remnants are crammed on a train forever circling the globe, with the poor huddled masses crammed in the back while the upper classes lord it up near the front. When a revolt fomented by the reluctant Curtis (Chris Evans, aka Captain America) and his one-legged mentor Gilliam (John Hurt) busts out, making a beeline towards the engine car and the mysterious Machiavellian engineer who controls the world of the train, we have plot and theme joined in purest form: move forward or die.
Since the story lacks Boon’s usual preoccupations with Korea’s history and culture, he goes for the gusto in every other department. Like his ramshackle heroes scrambling for every bit of weaponry and advantage they can find, he jacks up the movie with as many sly winks to other films and filmmakers as he can muster. The terse yet over-explanatory dialogue hails from any number of prison break flicks (“It’s not time yet.” “When?” “Soon.”). The Orwellian set-up and baroque humor are straight from Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Gilliam’s silent ass-kicking sidekick (Luke Pasqualino) harkens back to the mute warrior from the Korean epic Musa: The Warrior. The brawling action scenes are cribbed from Oldboy and Saving Private Ryan. And the final twist is right out of The Matrix Reloaded.
It’s a good thing the movie is overstuffed, because Snowpiercer satisfies least as an action spectacle. Lacking the hurtling momentum of a film like The Raid, the fight scenes are a blur of blood and guts, and while Boon gets credit for investing the pain and sacrifice with a bit of weight, he’s clearly more invested in all the funky bits in the margins: the offbeat designs for each individual train car, the brief glimpses of wasteland outside the windows, the way ghoulishness and comedy constantly intersect (Alison Pill is a hoot as a cheerfully homicidal kindergarten teacher), and let’s not forget the forbidden, thrilling, almost-forgotten taste of real sushi (we won’t get into what’s inside those yucky manufactured protein bars). Within this flamboyant design, the actors aren’t required to do much more than project their basic essence. That means Evans gets to be soulfully sincere, Hurt radiates gnarled regret, Ewen Bremner goes bug-eyed, Octavia Spenser sasses it up, and Vlad Ivanov is grim and implacable (that’s Captain America, 1984, Trainspotting, The Help, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, if you’re keeping score). To top it all off, Ed Harris makes a late appearance, acting as if he’s just beamed in from the set of The Truman Show.
Thankfully, three performances linger. Tilda Swinton, equipped with rotten teeth, bottlecap glasses and a wheedling Yorkshire accent, hams it up memorably as a high-ranking bureaucrat, and two Korean actors (Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung as a drug-addled father-and-daughter team) turn out to be the film’s soul. Song and Go have a specific function in the plot (they’re the only two people who can help our heroes progress from one car to the next), yet they’re the only characters that suggest a life outside the confines of the story. Stubborn one moment and blissed-out the next, they embrace the unpredictability that Boon seems to treasure.
While Snowpiercer bravely takes its premise to its logical apocalyptic conclusion, the finale comes off as a concession to typical blockbuster mechanics — there must be a final battle, a race against time, one last explosion, and by the end of it all it’s an open debate as to whether the film needed all the sound and fury. Still, it’s rare to see a sensibility at work when it comes to mayhem like this, especially when it’s executed with as much brio and quirk as it is in Snowpiercer. Market-tested and approved, this film most definitely is not, and it’s the better for it. If some moments leave you scratching your head, you can always fall back on Song and Go’s repartee, and their one overriding, suicidal desire: get off the damn train. Everyone else might be happy with moving from point A to point B, but Boon is happiest when he’s jumping the rails.
