Yet another bleak view of the future where everything we know and love is dead and gone. Snowpiercer is the story of life on a train that has been making its way around the world for the last eighteen years since some unknown something plunged the world into a complete ice age. We start off in the Back of the Train, where all the lowlives live. Our hero is a rare man with two arms and legs whose goal is to reach the Front of the Train. He meets many obstacles in his quest and loses many companions along the way.
This is an odd story. We are given answers along the way, but unfortunately, they are answers to questions that no one asked or needed answered. Image The Matrix with the back of the train being Zion and the front of the Train being where the Machines live in a perfect world. Only there is never any reason given as to why the Front of the Train needs the Back of the Train. We don’t have the human powered fields that keep the machines running. The obvious answers-cannibalism or fuel for some kind of meat eating Engine, are merely red herrings. There appears to be more than enough food to feed everyone on board, but, we are told, it’s a closed system that has to have an exact population in order to survive. We are never told why part of the population has to live like the Donner Party while the rest live like kings and queens.
Snowpiercer is a visually stunning bit of business. The Big Train looks very good as we move through ever more exotic and silly train cars. A sauna, a room full of swimming pools, a walk through aquarium, and so on and so forth. The people who live in the front of the train are still living the good life and party all the time while those in the rear have to eat nasty protein bars and wear filthy rags. There is a lot of graphic violence and a lot blood splatter around.
There are a number of familiar faces here:Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, and John Hurt all give good performances. But as is so often the case, the story is the weak spot here, not the acting.
The end of Snowpiercer gives some hope that all is not lost on Earth. But this tiny bit of hope is like the tiny bit of hope at the end of The Road, it is really no hope at all.
In the end, I didn’t like Snowpiercer because there were too damned many things that didn’t make any sense.
