Due to a long and complicated string of events, I was unable to make it to a movie in theatres this past weekend. I was able to squeeze in a movie from Netflix that I’d been wanting to see, so I figured I’d review that this week.
“Snowpiercer” is a strange fish, anyway you slice it. It’s an English language film from a Korean director based on a French graphic novel about a frozen post-apocalyptic world where the few human survivors live onboard a single train that has circles the globe once per year and has been doing so non-stop for the past 17 years.
If that wasn’t weird enough, “Snowpiercer” was mired in film distribution politics and was released to Video-on-Demand services such as iTunes within weeks of its limited theatrical debut.
Big cinema chains hate at-home viewing outings for new movies because it’s not hard to image that, nationwide, a lot of movie-goers would just as soon stay at home with their big screen TVs and skip the theatre altogether. It’s not an unreasonable fear, but the corporate politics an business tactics clashing with the artistic creation of film always leaves some fallout.
Regardless of its release controversy, “Snowpiercer” is an engaging, exciting look into a caste-based system where the rich are pampered and the poor and left to die and what happens when people are pushed beyond their limits. “Snowpiercer’s” setting is incredible and the film does an excellent job of dolling out information about why the passengers of the train are there and how their world works.
The film’s structure and ending are a little “Gasp! Look! A twist!” for my taste, but nevertheless, the film paints an arresting picture. “Snowpiercer” will go down in cinematic history as one of the early battles in the war of the cinema chain and Video-on-Demand; controversy notwithstanding, it’s a wild, weird and worrying ride around the snow-covered globe. I would recommend than hard-core science-fiction fans catch this on Netflix, but it may be too weird for casual movie-goers and definitely to violent and unsettling for the kiddos. Lastly, I love trains.
5 of 6 stars