Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer (2013)

93% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 102 reviews)

Runtime: 126 minutes

Directed by: Joon-ho Bong

Starring: Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Kang-ho Song, John Hurt

From: It was distributed in the United States by The Weinstein Company, a source of controversy

I tell you, I haven't had a good week. It's been big things and little things. The latter is Letterboxd not operating properly for me for the past 24 hours. I just may not look at the site for a few days until I am sure they can actually get their shit together. I say that as I am glad I was actually able to copy and paste over my review of (or rather, rant against) this movie.

The plot description, from me for once: In 2014, a chemical is used to combat global warming. It goes haywire and causes a new Ice Age. The few people that do survive are on a massive train that goes around the globe once a year. Really. It's a class system and the lower classes are finally willing to rebel. The rest of this is from Letterboxd:

2014 is really “the year of disappointing movies”, at least in my opinion. From Sabotage being a thoroughly unpleasant film to The Raid 2 being quite a bit worse than the the first film, I am thankful I thought this year's Godzilla was awesome. I know those last two opinions are drastically different from what most people online (especially this site) think, but that's honestly what I think.

I sure as hell know that most people will be disgusted with my rating of this film or just be flabbergasted. Honestly, I am flabbergasted too I feel this way. The few Korean films I have seen have been high quality, stuff I really dig (such as The Good, The Bad, The Weird or War of the Arrows) and while I haven't seen The Host since I watched it on the big screen back when it played the arthouse joints, I thought it was good... not great, but good.

While I did see some opinions that say the movie was about average, most rate it as great, so of course I presumed that I'd enjoy it and I was happy to see it considering The Weinstein Company's mishandling of it and how they came real close to being D-bags and cutting the movie themselves, something that I am glad did not happen for artist integrity reasons. There are three spots around Orlando to see the film so I was surprised the auditorium of about 100 was almost completely full, and it included some people who I was surprised to see had even heard of the movie, to be honest. I couldn't really tell what they thought of it.

Unfortunately, while I am in a very small minority here I thought that much of the movie is just horrible and also insufferable and “illogical” doesn't even begin to describe it. I am sure everyone knows its plot by now so I won't waste time giving it, except that I did know beforehand what it basically was and yes, I did think the general idea didn't make a whole lot of sense. I thought that wouldn't be a big deal as if you have a fun story populated with interesting and fun characters. I don't know why it didn't work for me like it has with just about everyone else, but I HATED most of the characters; they were just illogical A-holes and acted dumb, no matter if they were “the good guys”, “the bad guys” or innocent parties. I don't know what the hell it was that Tilda Swinton played, except it was an atrocious caricature of something or another and not something you'd actually find on planet Earth, no matter if it's a new Ice Age or not.

Besides the characters I couldn't give a damn about, there's the story. In simplest terms it makes sense. How it plays out, though... nope. It's a confused mess & the further along it goes the more I got angry with all the surreal and ridiculous and intelligence-insulting shit I saw on screen. I could go on and on about it and give spoilers but I won't. The movie seemed to think it would be “funny” to throw out all sorts of bizarre shit on the screen as it'd be entertaining. I say “nope” to that in this film's case.

And as noted the CGI was pretty bad, which surprised me as I've seen older Korean films where it was clearly better than what's present here. And as I haven't seen too many complaints about it yet, I thought too much of the action stuff was a shaky-cam nightmare to where I had difficulty making it out; I pretty much can't stand such a thing so that didn't help my opinion of the film.

Then the final act-like some I thought the first act was tone-deaf and overlong and that helped start things off on a bad foot, or maybe it should be bad arm-most of it was particularly bad as it gave more exposition which make it even more illogical, characters became even more intolerable, and how they chose to end the movie... I wasn't expecting it but it doesn't mean it was good or the right way to end that story; it just made me feel like the train ride I took was a real waste of time and it seemed kind of pointless. It does not get an even lower rating as there was a rare moment or two I thought was cool.


What a MASSIVE disappointment in a year that has already had more than I expected. I hope to see more more movies I actually like or my Top 10 for the year will be pretty weak compared to the past few years.

I'll return tomorrow night.