Snowpiercer (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on July 6, 2014 @ tonymacklin.net.

Snowpiercer is Throw Momma and the Kitchen Sink off the train. It's a snow job.

Character goes clattering helter-skelter into mile high drifts of icy chaos.

When you go to see this film be sure to leave your shtick detector at home.

Snowpiercer is one of those films that would be much better trimmed to 90 minutes; instead it careens into redundant set pieces for more than two hours. After you see the 100th person brutally killed, it becomes kind of rote.

If a character shows any possibility of becoming interesting - they rarely do - he or she promptly is killed off. At least, they're all superficial.

The moral is the human race ain't worth saving.

Snowpiercer is the story of people on a train that is perpetually hurtling in motion with the only remaining survivors of a cooling system that froze the world and killed off the rest of the entire population. See what trying to mess with climate change can do.

The people imprisoned in the tail of the train are grimy and desperate. They plan to make their way forward to a better existence. Each car has a different class of people.

Ah, allegory.

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho is adept at creating galvanic sequences. But the brutal, bloody repetition is almost interminable. He and Kelly Masterson did the screenplay from a French graphic novel. One can only hope the graphic novel had more depth.

The often ludicrous and banal dialogue in the film has such lines as the following, spoken by Curtis (Chris Evans): "You know what I hate about myself. I know what people taste like. Babies taste best."

That's the hero. Maybe not a gourmet, but at least he's sensitive.

The cast which struggles to find their roles has Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Song Kang-ho, and Octavia Spencer.

Tilda Swinton screeches as the Wicked Witch of the Rails. She's impressively inane.

So is the film.