Director: Bong-Joon Ho

Based on the French Graphic Novel

Plot: In the year 2031 after a global warming experiment gone wrong the entire earth has frozen over, leaving a few humans, separated by class, to survive on an ongoing train.

I have never anticipated an On-Demand release so much before. I was ready to break my personal no download moral code in order to see this movie proper, but nonetheless I see it under premieres this week on Cogeco. It’s very bizarre wanting something so much yet disdaining the package it comes to you in.

Having to pay my cable company nine dollars in order to see the film, who then pay power-hungry NA distributor Harvey Weinstein (who wanted the film cut down in runtime in order to satisfy his own demands of release) feels somewhat wrong. Yet here critics like me sit at the back of the entertainment train awaiting a product we ourselves need to continue our jobs (in my case hobby but run with me here). Sometimes we shout, there is even kickback within the industry, effectively using our words as weapons, and our criticisms are heard. Yet despite what seems a now often broken process, it still feels natural for this industry to continue on, even as it heads toward derailment.

Similar queries lie at the centre of Snowpiercer, primarily an action driven film that stands out due to its stylish and unique direction that seems to take inspiration lifted from many places; naturally the foreign cinema that comes from Bong Joon-Ho making his english language debut, all the way to modern video games. I will say for myself these stylistic compositions of camera angles, simple yet multi-dimensional characters, effectively balanced with major themes are put together in a way that I can’t remember having seen on-screen before. I wouldn’t necessarily call Snowpiercer for lack of a better term ground-breaking, though that seems what it technically is, it just feels new, and that’s something I haven’t unfortunately felt in a long time. It’s probably due to become a classic anytime soon, and be recycled among the rest.

Rating: +2

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