Snowpiercer (2013)
Chris Evans (Curtis); Jamie Bell (Edgar); Tilda Swinton (Mason); John Hurt (Gilliam); Kang-ho Song (Namgoong Minsoo); Ah-sung Ko (Yona); Ed Harris (Wilford); Octavia Spencer (Tanya)
The Gist
Alright, so it’s been awhile since I posted anything. My laptop died in November and I am waiting for a new computer to arrive in January. Here is the first review of 3 movies I have watched recently.
My Take: There were elements that I both liked and didn’t enjoy about this flick. At first the idea of the whole movie taking place on a train seems a little far fetched but I actually liked that aspect of it. Kind of claustrophobic but as the characters made it further on the train it really opened up from the dank and depressing closed in train cars to looking like a much larger environment. As for the story, it had potential but I had a few issues with it. So, the world is a frozen wasteland and this train is what remains, circling the earth continuously. It is divided between the rich, their protectors and the poor (living in the dank depressing part) as well as a type of prison I guess where drug addicts are stored in drawers like in a morgue. Again, a good base line but the problem is that I couldn’t follow a lot of what was happening in the first part of the movie. I felt like I had missed an explanation of what was happening with several parts of the flick. It became much clearer in the last 20-30 minutes when Curtis explained what it was like on the train right after he boarded it 18 years earlier. I was surprised by the revelations that he revealed and I actually liked the hard truths he told not mention the deaths left in his wake throughout the movie. The actors were all really good, Chris Evans looked very different from his Captain America personae and I am starting to like Jamie Bell as I see more of his movies.
Final Thoughts: All in all, Snowpiercer was a decent flick with an interesting setting, flawed characters suffering from their past sins, looking for hope or redemption and a story that was good but had issues with keeping the secrets a little too vague, making it hard for me (I could be alone on this one) to follow. This isn’t for everyone but I do recommend it to anyone who likes a dystopian tale and can handle some of the grittier details of surviving in a broken world.
Dawning Creates 