Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer is based on a French graphic novel. Only the French could envision a dystopian future that entirely takes place on a train!

The plot is simple. A science experiment with the atmosphere goes horribly wrong and plunges the world into an ice age. The only survivors are a few hundred people aboard a train that endlessly circles the globe in a year long circuit that touches every continent. The rich ruling class live in the front. The lower class live in the back, kept in check by the paramilitary who seem to live in the middle. There must be a revolution!

The amount of bizarre facts you have to believe possible is stunning: Why does the train have to keep hurdling along if there's no where to go and nothing to run from? Wouldn't the thousands of bridges and tens of thousands of miles of track eventually break under the pressures of ice and glaciers and landslides? How can just a few cars devoted to growing food sustain the rich who eat steak, eggs, and sushi? Yes, the rich have a sushi bar in one of the cars. They also have a sauna car, a disco car, a really progressive school car, and an aquarium car.

Its a shame that it has to be this film that Bong Joon-Ho chose to make his jump from K-wave to Hollywood. His other movies Memories of Murder, Barking Dogs Never Bite and Mother, show that he is a director that can deliver bittersweet, warm yet tragic stories that haunt you for days. However, no such luck here.

The plot unfolds just like any other dystopian movie. Good looking poor guy eventually kills his way through swarms of military types, aided by a wise man and a minority. He loses his best friend along the way. He waxes philosophically. He bleeds. And then he finally makes it to the front of the train to confront the "Engineer" who is the evil ruler who runs the perpetual motion locomotive that's keeping them all alive.

Can you guess who it is? No, not Michael Cain - he's too whimsical. Morgan Freeman? Nope - He only plays gods. Its Ed Harris, who excels at mad Nazi genius characters. The hero finds out that the entire revolution was masterminded by nazi train guy in order to "cull the herd" because the human population was putting a strain on the quality of sushi (ok, not the sushi part, but they had to kill off a bunch of people none the less.) So our hero has been nothing more than a pawn in a game of depopulation. Hero dude is pissed. Only one thing left to do, right? Smash the system!

The movie ends with a bomb going off which derails the train, resulting in one big train crash. Finally, we see a young girl exit the wreckage in a cool Eskimo parka and walk through the snow. She sees a polar bear up on a ridge and smiles. We are supposed to see this as a symbol of hope - that life is making a comeback on earth, but let's face it - whoever survived that train wreck is screwed!