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Snowpiercer (2013)

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Snowpiercer (2013) Reviews

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Snowpiercer (2014)

Rated R for violence, language and drug content

126 minutes

Cast

Chris Evans as Curtis

Jamie Bell as Edgar

John Hurt as Gilliam

Tilda Swinton as Mason

Alison Pill as schoolteacher

Octavia Spencer as Tanya

Ewen Bremner as Andrew

Director

• Joon-ho Bong

Screenplay

• Joon-ho Bong
• Kelly Masterson

Original Music Composer

• Marco Beltrami

Original Story

• Jacques Lob
• Benjamin Legrand
• Jean-Marc Rochette

Screenstory

• Joon-ho Bong

Director of Photography

• Kyung-Pyo Hong

 

Snowpiercer (2013) Plot

In 2031, 17 years after an attempt to stop global warming via stratospheric aerosol injection catastrophically backfires and creates a new ice age, the remnants of humanity have taken to a self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards.

Urged by his father-figure, Gilliam, Curtis Everett and his second-in-command, Edgar, lead the tail passengers in a revolt after they realize the guards’ weapons have no ammunition; bullets are believed to be extinct due to a previous revolt. They free Namgoong Minsoo, a captive security specialist, who insists that his clairvoyant daughter, Yona, be freed as well. Namgoong helps the tail mob progress forward, but they find themselves facing guards with melee weapons, overseen by Minister Mason.

During the battle, the train goes into a tunnel, causing total darkness. The guard force, who have night vision, begin picking off the blind rebels. However, the tail-sectioners launch a counterattack with torches and push the guards back. Edgar is held hostage, but Curtis abandons him to capture Mason, forcing her to order the remaining guards to surrender while Edgar is fatally stabbed.

The tail army stays back, holding the guards captive, while Curtis takes Mason, Namgoong, Yona, skilled fighter Grey, and Tanya and Andrew (two parents who have had their children taken from them) toward the front of the train.

Curtis’s group travels through several opulent cars. Namgoong and Yona recognize a landmark outside and consider that the ice may be thawing. The group reaches a schoolroom, where a teacher is indoctrinating the children on Wilford’s greatness. A bald man brings eggs for the children to open to celebrate the eighteenth circumnavigation of the Earth. The bald man goes to the tail army and shoots them with loaded automatic guns hidden under the eggs, revealing that bullets still exist.

The captured guards are freed, as is Mason’s henchman Franco. The teacher, who received a gun from the bald man, kills Andrew before Grey kills her. Franco broadcasts to the classroom his execution of Gilliam, this prompts Curtis to kill Mason. Curtis’s group moves on, but Franco catches up with them, killing Grey and Tanya. Franco is seemingly killed by Curtis and Namgoong. The two, along with Yona, continue onward.

In the last car before the engine, Namgoong reveals that the reason he collected the drug Kronole was to use it as an explosive to escape the train with Yona, believing they can survive. Curtis stops them, as he wants to meet Wilford; Curtis explains that in the early days of the train, 17 years before, the tail section had resorted to cannibalism, and he had been ready to eat the infant Edgar but Gilliam offered him his arm instead.

Curtis wants to face Wilford to ask why he created this closed ecosystem. The engine door opens, and Wilford’s assistant Claude emerges and wounds Namgoong before inviting Curtis inside.

Curtis meets Wilford and, to his shock, learns that he and Gilliam conspired to stage Curtis’s rebellion to reduce the tail section’s population to sustainable levels. Wilford orders 74% of the tail passengers killed. He then offers Curtis his position leading the train. Curtis appears ready to accept when Yona overpowers Claude, rushes in, and pulls open a floorboard to reveal Andrew and Tanya’s children, Andy and Timmy, working the engine as slaves.

Appalled, Curtis knocks out Wilford and rescues Timmy from the machinery, though he loses his arm in the process. Curtis gives Yona matches to light the fuse for the Kronole, while Namgoong fights and kills Franco, who had followed them, along with partygoers from another car. As the door to the engine room will not close, Curtis and Namgoong use their bodies to protect Yona and Timmy from the blast.

The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails and wrecks the train. With Namgoong unresponsive, Yona escapes the wreckage with Timmy. They see a polar bear in the distance, indicating that life exists outside the train. The bear notices them.

Snowpiercer (2013) Box office

Between its South Korean opening on 27 June 2014 and 23 October 2014, the film earned US$86.7 million worldwide. As of April 2014, it was the tenth highest-grossing domestic film in South Korea with 9.35 million admissions. The film holds the domestic record for the fastest movie (domestic and foreign) to reach four million admissions, which it achieved in its fifth day after premiere, and another record for the highest weekend figure (from Friday to Sunday) for a Korean film, with 2.26 million viewers.

The film took in $171,000 on its US opening weekend, averaging around $21,400 per theater. The film grossed US$59.8 million in South Korea and its largest international market was China, with $11.1 million.

Snowpiercer (2013) Critical Response

Film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 261 reviews with an average score of 8.1/10. The website’s critical consensus states, “Snowpiercer offers an audaciously ambitious action spectacle for filmgoers numb to effects-driven blockbusters.” Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 84 out of 100, based on 38 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be “universal acclaim”.

Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the piece an “A” rating, stating, “Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all-too-rare sensation that you’ve just witnessed something you’ve never seen before … and need to see again.”

A. O. Scott wrote, in his review for The New York Times, “Planetary destruction and human extinction happen a half-dozen times every summer. It’s rarely this refreshing, though.” Andrew Pulver of The Guardian scored the film most positively, writing, “Snowpiercer works brilliantly, the sum of extremely disparate parts that adds up to cinematic excellence.”

Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York scored the film five out of five stars, writing, “Sprung from a 1982 French graphic novel and bearing its era’s trickle-down tensions, Snowpiercer is a headlong rush into conceptual lunacy—but you’ll love it anyway.” Rothkopf praises Joon-ho, stating, “… Bong grabs onto the grungy conventions of postapocalyptic adventure with relish. He serves up claustrophobic action scenes (one largely shot in the dark) and ominous, messianic overtones as the band of rebels makes its way forward.”

Lou Lumenick of The New York Post gave the film high acclaim, writing, “Don’t miss it—this is enormously fun visionary filmmaking, with a witty script and a great international cast.”

He added, “The beautifully designed train is one of the most memorable in screen history …” David Denby of The New Yorker spoke highly of the piece, stating it to be, “Violent, often absurd, but full of brilliant surprises, while Bong keeps the center of the action moving toward the front of the train, a considerable feat of camera placement, choreographed mayhem, and cohesive editing,” and praising Nekvasil’s production design, “Bong and [Nekvasil], provide them with a series of sybaritic astonishments.”

Clarence Tsui of The Hollywood Reporter wrote a highly positive review, commenting, “Snowpiercer is still an intellectually and artistically superior vehicle to many of the end-of-days futuristic action thrillers out there.” Speaking highly of Bong’s film-making, Tsui wrote, “Bong’s vivid depictions—aided by Ondřej Nekvasil’s production design, Hong Kyung-pyo’s cinematography and Steve M. Choe’s editing—are exceptional.”

David Thomson of The New Republic remarked that “The most bracing and liberating thing about Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer is not just its lyrical forward motion, but the exuberance with which the film revels in its plot predicament.” He furthers praises Nekvasil’s “progression of design set-pieces” and Tilda Swinton’s performance, saying “She is the life and soul of this riotous party, and you will be sad to see her disposed of, no matter that Mason’s ghastly manner has earned it.”

Scott Foundas of Variety wrote, “An enormously ambitious, visually stunning and richly satisfying futuristic epic from the gifted Korean genre director Bong Joon-ho.” Foundas added that Beltrami’s original score was “among the generally impeccable craft contributions [to the film].”

James Rocchi of Film.com wrote that, “If the film has one element that never flags or falters, it’s Evans.”

Some were more critical of the film. Jordan Adler of We’ve Got This Covered wrote “We leave Snowpiercer more exhausted with questions than invigorated by its unique vision and style. It is a formidable example of directorial control bogged down by poor writing, half-finished effects work and a rather thin exploration of a fascinating dystopian universe.”

Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post found otherwise potentially good acting to be “virtually lost in a tonal mishmash that can never decide between thoughtful political metaphor, lightheartedness and pulverizing violence” and went on to describe the director’s “tiresome, slow-motion fetishism, mixing costumes and weaponry in an effort to distract from the scenes’ sheer repetitiveness.”

In 2020, Snowpiercer was ranked by The Guardian number 8 among the classics of modern South Korean Cinema. The film appeared on several critics’ lists of the ten best films of 2014.

Snowpiercer (2013) Accolades

Snowpiercer (2013) Movie Info

• Rating:
  R (Language|Drug Content|Violence)
• Genre:
  Sci-Fi, Action, Mystery & Thriller
• Original Language:
  English
• Director:
  Bong Joon Ho
• Producer:
  Jeong Tae-seong, Steven Nam, Park Chan-wook, Lee Taeheon
• Writer:
  Bong Joon Ho, Kelly Masterson
• Release Date (Theaters):
  Jun 27, 2014  Limited
• Release Date (Streaming):
  Oct 21, 2014
• Box Office (Gross USA):
  $4.6M
• Runtime:
  2h 5m
• Distributor:
  Radius TWC

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