MOVIE REVIEW: Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer is a movie that I'd only heard of from flipping through the streaming movie options on Netflix.  However, when I was traveling back from visiting family over the holidays with my fiance, we stumbled upon this Best Movies Off Radar 2014 article by Rotten Tomatoes staffers, and it was on the list.  Their description was enough to put it on our "to watch" list.  We forgot about it for a couple of days and then while searching for something to watch on Netflix, boom!  there it was!  Needless to say, we didn't pass up the chance to watch it, and I am glad we didn't.

Snowpiercer begins with a little back story.  In 2014, Earth is going through terrible climate conditions, with the climate heating up to the point where the world's governments decide to spray a chemical in the air to help regulate temperatures.  The problem is, this chemical blocks all heat from the sun whatsoever, and throws the Earth into a perpetual winter.  We're talking tundra winter here.  The only human survivors are the people who were lucky enough to be aboard a perpetual-motion engine train that is on a track such that it circles the globe once every 365 days.  The people on board are separated by class, with the most elite at the front of the train, and the lower classes in the tail.  The elite live and eat like kings while the lower class lives in squalor and eats gelatinous protein bars rationed out to them.

We meet our main character, Curtis (played by Chris Evans of Captain America fame), in the year 2031, and he has plans for a rebellion in which the lower class breaks through the length of the train and take control of the engine from Mr. Wilford - the creator of the train.  Their initial efforts at breaking through the first gate are successful, at which point they break out Namgoong Minsu (Song Kang-ho), the man who built the security system on the train and their best chance of getting through all the gates, and his daughter Yona (Go Ah-sung).  They meet many foes along the way, and the movie breaks into a lot of gratuitous violence.  At the very end there is a moment that I would call a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment - you'll have to watch to see what I mean. 

The cast is also great, with appearances by Chris Evans (Captain America), John Hurt (Harry Potter), Allison Pill (Newsroom), Octavia Spencer (The Help), Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin), Tilda Swinton (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Ed Harris (Pollock) and more.

Overall, I found the premise really interesting, and for people who like the dystopian genre, it's worth seeing.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.