Holy crap. Turns out Chris Evans can act. He can hold his own against Tilda Swinton and John Freaking Hurt. "Captain America" proves himself an actor who balances brutal action with believable character discovery in Snowpiercer.
A train endlessly circles the ice-encased earth. Aboard the thousand carriages of this ark-on-rails, humanity's remnant survives. The population is harshly striated, class determined by one's distance from the locomotive. Evans leads the latest revolt, taking Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, and Kang-ho Song along in a quest for the holy engine.
The heroes' journey is classically linear (like Frodo's to Mt. Doom or Dorothy's to Emerald City). Forward they forge from the slums of baggage cars through increasingly lavish appointments. Very nearly an on-screen presence himself, production designer Ondrej Nekvasil creates a moving landscape that makes the Orient Express a quaint local excursion by comparison.
The plot is tight and organic. Nothing feels like a set-up for some successive reveal. And as much as audiences might root for some forgiving inconsistencies in brutal physics or the emotions of loss, few emerge. I suspect some of the film's seamlessness could be credited to the stories previous iterations. Director Joon-ho Bong is merely Snowpiercer's most recent caretaker. Since Le Transperceneige first appeared as a French graphic novel in 1982, it's been polished by several authors in multiple languages.
One of the movie's most clever inclusions is Yona, a clairvoyant played by Ah-sung Ko. Her character fuels a fear famously articulated by horror-meister, Stephen King. King has long held that there's almost nothing more terrifying than a closed door. Such doors are focal points for personal imagination and anxiety. But Yona is a barometer, a forecaster. She is seldom able to provide detailed information about what lies ahead. But when her face blanches, when her watery eyes widen, when she screams "LOCK THE GATE!"... oh, hell.
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from the graphic novel by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette
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It isn't a perfect movie. But there's almost no way to discuss important weaknesses in the last half hour without giving away the plot. Suffice it to say that Snowpiercer's conclusion owes a bit too much to The Truman Show for my liking. Elsewhere certain of its genre, the movie's sudden switch from visceral action to verbose philosophy is disorienting. Even so, I felt this movie had taken me somewhere. It gave me empathy for people I'd never met who were nevertheless exactly like me.
