- At what is intended to be a particularly poignant moment in Joon-ho Bong's utterly atrocious Snowpiercer, the revolutionary protagonist Curtis (Chris Evans) discusses how the people living near the back of the film's eponymous train resorted to cannibalism early on, further elaborating that "babies taste the best." By that point in the film, I had already endured countless gratuitous bone-crushing axe fights, the supposedly stunning revelation that poor people were eating ground-up bugs, and several of the most heavy-handed representations of social inequality I've ever seen put on film. And then, presumably because the narrative had been a little too subtle up until that point, the filmmakers introduced the delicate subject of baby-eating. Jonathan Swift they ain't.
- The imbecilic plot: The technological solution to global warming turned out to be worse than the problem, causing the Earth to completely freeze. The lone survivors are stuck on a train that circumvents the globe once per year running on an apparently limitless supply of power. Naturally, the people sitting in first class become first class citizens while the people in the caboose are relegated to servitude or extreme penury. The people in the back also tend to be missing a few limbs...because they ate them right after they quit eating babies. I am seriously not making these details up! Anyway, Curtis is the leader, Gilliam (John Hurt) is the wise old engineer, Edgar (Jamie Bell) is the lovable sidekick, Tanya (Octavia Spencer) is the sassy black maternal figure, and Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song) is the drug-addicted technology expert.
- Did I mention that there is an industrial waste product that can be used as a hallucinogenic drug and is also highly explosive? Yeah, it basically does whatever the plot requires of it, including transforming a bunch of weird ravers into a belligerent mob. Also, maybe one of the train riders (Ah-sung Ko) is clairvoyant, which makes foreshadowing a lot easier on the writers. And one of the badguys (Vlad Ivanov) is apparently indestructible, which helps if you don't want to cast a bunch of different badguys. Finally, if those of you in the audience are having trouble deciding whether to sympathize with the rough-and-tumble rebels or to take the side of the effete ruling class that forces poor people to eat bugs, it is also revealed that the train's chief engineer (Ed Harris) uses children as slaves. None of these plot devices make any sense, and everything is just terrible.
- Snowpiercer has precisely two redeeming qualities: Ed Harris and Tilda Swinton. As members of the train's ruling class, both actors are so engaging that they almost made me forget how bad the film surrounding them really was. Maybe the biggest surprise to me was that the film's visual effects were also completely lackluster, and the grimy set design was nothing you wouldn't find in every other post-apocalyptic summer movie. Seriously, the film did almost nothing right. Anyway, my favorite part was probably the end, when most of the characters are presumed dead and the remaining two survivors are shown marching their way toward a polar bear. You can imagine how I fantasized that encounter going. If you must insist on combining your social critique with a mode of transportation, may I recommend John Ford's classic Stagecoach? Any minute of that film is better than every minute of this one, and it's 75 years old to boot.
- Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, which I'm obviously going to rush out and buy.
