Snowpiercer is the closest thing the world will ever see to a Bioshock movie. And in all likelihood, it works even better than a straight adaptation ever would. Director Joon-ho Bong presents forth a fairly straightforward journey from the tail of a train to the head of it that's never less than visually fascinating. Meanwhile, the simplicity of that forward momentum provides plenty of room for a story that is at turns gruesome, darkly funny, infuriating, and heart-wrenching.
Seventeen years after the world's botched attempt to reverse climate change, the last of our species is stuck aboard a perpetual momentum train, traveling across a dead and frozen Earth. A long, steel box houses a few drops of human decency struggling against the most corrupted, degraded tendencies of our species. The difference between the two factions doesn't even have the courtesy to be distinguishable by class, which, while clearly demarcated, does not necessarily confer morality or decency on one side or the other (the citizens of the tail come off slightly better, if only because they have the misfortune to be aware of their miserable lives while the well-off citizens of the head thrive in ignorance of those consigned to the rear cars). These would be somewhat less bleak equations, if the occupants of the train didn't also happen to be the last of humankind.
Chris Evans' Curtis leads a team of rebels to take the engine of the train. Car by car, they fight for the dignity of their comrades in the tail and the children that are, now and again, taken to help run the engine. They bloodily force their way out of the slums of the tail, through the kitchen (where they learn what their food is made from), and into the opulent digs of the upper class, which includes a terrifying indoctrination center for the children of the head, where Curtis guns down a delightfully repugnant Tilda Swinton.
I'm not sure when exactly I started thinking that Joon-ho Bong was perfect for a theoretical Bioshock adaptation, but by the time Curtis and his surviving rebels are making their way through the upper class cars at the front of the train--decadent, beautifully-appointed, totally at odds with the way people in an enclosed and delicate ecosystem should be able to live--I realized this was that adaptation. And it's not too long before Ed Harris'
Instead, it turns out that Curtis' revolution is just the most recent in a long line of orchestrated uprisings to maintain the delicate balance of population and resources. Curtis, at least for a time, was being led by the very forces he was trying to undermine (would you kindly...). Realizing that there is no future for the people in the tail, or any hope for any interruption to the rotten status quo, Curtis opts for the last best hope. And instead of a scavenger hunt and a disappointing boss battle, we get an uplifting sequence in which the train crashes and a couple of surviving children stumble out into the cold, spying a polar bear in the distance (which I think symbolizes good eatin').
There's a balancing act to a story that relies on humankind being its worst. In particular, it's difficult to stick the landing in a satisfying way. It can be all too easy to close out on a hopelessly bleak note or go for the contrived and improbable hopeful ending. Bioshock gave players a choice between the two. Snowpiercer wisely opts for the least crushing finale possible. Yona and Tim (seventeen and five, respectively, with little-to-know working knowledge of the planet they've never set foot on) are not set up very well. And it's only a few lines of dialogue spoken twenty minutes before the end that gives the audience any hope for the Earth itself having any hope for survival. But they've survived the train--no great environment for a kid--and, if Curtis' uprising represents anything, it's that a chance of a hope is better than giving in. At least there's some humanity in that.
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