Brutal but beautiful. In 2031 a failed global warming mitigation has frozen the earth and all survivors are divided by class on a train. Then the underprivileged people in the back think about staging a coup.
Chris Evans (last blogged in Captain America: The Winter Soldier--how appropriate!) stars as the reluctant but passionate leader of the downtrodden, though it took me at least half hour to recognize him with that black hat, hair, and beard. John Hurt and Tilda Swinton (both most recently in Only Lovers Left Alive) support as the elder of the tribe and the prissy communications director from first class, respectively. She is hilarious, in a role originally intended for a man. Others in steerage include Jamie Bell (last in Defiance) whose character I found quite annoying, Octavia Spencer (Fruitvale Station) as a distraught mom, Ewen Bremner (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) as a wild-eyed crazy (as usual for him), and Kang-Ho Song (The Good, The Bad, The Weird) as a crafty addict with a criminal past, whom we understand through subtitles and a mechanical translating machine. Ed Harris makes an appearance in the third act (I'll wait until he stars in something to profile him, as his recent work was pre-blog).
Based on a graphic novel Le Transpierceneige by Jean-Marc Rochette (some of whose drawings are in the movie), this is Korean director/co-writer Joon-Ho Bong's (AKA Bong Joon-Ho in the customary Asian manner of surname first) (I've heard of him but not seen any of his previous work) first English language movie. The dark cinematography is by Bong's frequent collaborator Kyung-pyo Hong.
The intense score, by Marco Beltrami (The Sessions) can be streamed from a playlist on youtube.
We saw it about three weeks ago, drawn by its 95% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (77 from audiences). Not for the faint of heart, this is nonetheless good filmmaking.
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