Snowpiercer (2013) - Film Review

Review:

*Originally written June 4th, 2015*

I've been wanting to watch Snowpiercer for about a year now, but sadly there has been no distribution for it in the UK. I could have spent mega money to import the Blu-ray from another country. Thankfully, I changed the DNS code on my PS4 so I could access the Netflix catalogue of America, and when I saw Snowpiercer was on it, I jumped on that in a heart-beat.

For a film I've been waiting so long to see, I'm pretty happy to say I was not disappointed. Snowpiercer is an original, tense and incredibly well filmed sci-fi film set in a future where the world has been lost to global warming and the last remnants of society are set to a big train which travels all across the world.

What surprised me straight out the gate is just how good this looked, the directors vision of this future was amazing and 98% of the film takes place within this train, which I thought would get tedious, but thankfully each area of the train was unique and as visually interesting as the last

Snowpiercer's all talented cast is led by an excellent Chris Evans, who I was so refreshed to see him in something that wasn't an overblown Marvel film, he even gets the best line of the film, which is said towards the end and it was one of the most darkly funny lines I've ever heard in a film since Marla's "I haven't been fucked like that since grade-school" line from Fight Club.

The rest of the cast fare extremely well, apart from Tilda Swinton, who for some reason, all I could think of when I heard her voice was a villager from the Fable games.  Aside from her, the cast includes Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Ed Harris and Ewan Bremner.

The action scenes are all incredible, the highlight being a fight which takes place between about 40 men all armed with axes in one carriage of the train. 

I was very surprised by the depth of the film, I did not expect the themes of class and equality to be so present here, but it made sense to the narrative as it's about the lower class fighting their way from the bottom of the train all the way to the literally and metaphorical first class of the train. All the action on the display is always interesting and Chris Evan's character got more and more unhinged as the film went on which led to a surprisingly heartfelt and twist-filled finale which I did not see coming at all.


I don't really have any complaints about Snowpiercer other than the fact it could have done with a more compelling villain and I felt it could have been a bit shorter. That aside, Snowpiercer is amazing, go see it, and I will definitely be picking up the Baby-Blu when it is finally released in the UK (Whenever that will be)

8/10 Dans

Snowpiercer still has no release in the UK

Watch the trailer below:

Follow us:
Twitter: @FigmentReviews
Instagram: @thesurprisingadventuresofdanb
YouTube: Figment Reviews 
Letterboxd: Dan
Facebook