Surely the strangest action thriller of 2014 is Snowpiercer, a wild and woolly carnival ride of a film that is part apocalypto-horror, part clownish prophecy about the dangers of climate change, among other scary things.
It's the first Englishlanguage film from director Bong Joon-ho (Mother, The Host), who wrote the screenplay based on a French graphic novel. It's 2031, 17 years after a solution to global warming turned out to be just the opposite, obliterating all life on earth and dropping us into a deep freeze. All that's left of humankind is aboard a train, a "rattling ark" that circumnavigates the globe in a route that takes precisely one year, built by a mad genius named Wilfred.
You won't be surprised to know that the train is a microcosm of what used to be the world outside, with the have-nots starving at the back of the train while the haves eat sushi and have their hair done in the beauty salon up front.
There's most definitely a leadership hierarchy, too: Gilliam (John Hurt) is on his way out as leader of the plebs in the train's rear; Curtis (Chris Evans) is pegged to replace him. All past revolutions have failed, but Curtis has vision. Aided by his de facto second-in-command (Jamie Bell) Curtis pushes out of the overcrowded, stagnant car where he's spent the past 17 years, with plans to go all the way to the front.
After the first push, hope of getting any further lies with a security specialist (Song Kang-ho) who trades access to each subsequent car for a hallucinogenic industrial-waste compound called Kronole. Tension builds with each railcar, as we never know whether the next door will open onto a tranquil greenhouse or another bloody siege.
Mason (Tilda Swinton) is a liaison between the front and rear communities who metes out punishments while crowing about how "eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine" and other such biblical mumbo-jumbo. She's quite a sight, what with her discoloured dentures, matronly suits, and over-the-top Yorkshire brogue. For a while the whole thing threatens to turn into The Grand Budapest Train, so quirky is Swinton's role.
Then there's the hilarity and sunny weirdness of the school train (led by Scott Pilgrim's Alison Pill), complete with a rotating organ and the children singing songs about not being turned into kidsicles.
But before you get too comfy, know that the film is stunningly violent, too. Deadly martial arts, freeze-dried limbs and a massacre (impressively choreographed) that's grisly even before it takes place in train-tunnel darkness.
At times, especially in the long-perspective shots, it's very Kubrick, down to the music playing in the sauna car (Al Bowlly's 1930s ditty "Midnight, the Stars, and You"). It's cheeky: Cream's "Strange Brew" plays in the food car when Curtis finds out what's really in those gelatinous protein bricks they've been eating. And Hurt's character name is surely a nod to Terry Gilliam, whose stamp can be seen in the labyrinthine chaos of the underdogs' car.
The action finally slows down for some true confessionals and unsubtle rumination on the inhumanity of man with Ed Harris. That's OK, though. The story is remarkably varied, considering the finite possibilities offered by a frozen-shut moving train. Snowpiercer is a varied, vibrant spectacle and it's one wild ride.
