Snowpiercer (2013)

I watched this movie before reading the cast list and I'm very glad I did. I will explain why later on.
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I don't recall any commercials for it really, though I tend to fast-forward through commercials. I saw a very brief mention of it as a preview on some other DVD and I thought it looked mildly interesting, but also in the theme of other movies in which there are class divisions between the have and have-not's. Nothing too original there.

There was a grittiness and movies that tend to only have one location, in this case a train, tends to get a little stale, but this one stayed varied enough to keep it interesting.

You see almost right away the lower class people, kept in the rear of a train, who are there because of an ice age that has killed and frozen anything outside the train. They are forced to eat these black rectangles of Jell-O looking stuff that is supposed to be "protein," but apparently is pretty awful. They are all dirty and in cramped quarters. There are guards with guns who won't let them past their quarters, and they can see
glimpses of the quarters beyond.

The story line propels when Claude (a woman) comes in and starts measuring the height and arm span of children under the age of 5. She snatches two boys away, one from Andrew (Ewen Brenner) and one from Tanya (Octavia Spencer). This infuriates our two lead characters which are Curtis and Edgar.

They come up with a plan to start a rebellion and make their way through these gates. The action is pretty good. Once they break through the first set of gates, there are several fight scenes which are pretty brutal and somewhat riveting.

They find as they start to make their way through the length of this very long train, that there is a whole other world going on. Where their space is dark, grimy, cramped, no windows, terrible food, where your children are snatched away or you're beaten at any moment, they find that there are sections of the train that are growing fresh fruit and vegetables, a sushi bar, an aquarium bridge, classrooms, rave's, high end luxury.

As you see them progress through more and more areas that they can't believe exist and as more and more of their original group is killed, Curtis finally makes it to the engine room (the front of the train).

There is a really interesting conversation that takes place between Curtis and Namgoong (Song Kang-Ho), where you learn that Curtis, who is this very strong, brave, fierce leader, had a very dark and disturbing past. You learn his connection to Edgar and Gilliam (John Hurt) and it had some emotion to it.

Then Curtis breaks through to meet the designer and operator of the train, the one who has been keeping them enslaved in the tail and made them live the way they had been, the one who gives the orders for how many of them are to be killed, and the one responsible for taking children away from their parents, Wilford (Ed Harris).

Again, I didn't know any of the cast for this movie ahead of time. I was very surprised to see Ed Harris at the end. I knew that Mason was Tilda Swinson, you could make that out easily enough, though her make-up was very good at making her look like someone else.

I really liked the ending of the movie. There was one particular scene where Curtis, Namgoong, Yona, and Tanya's little boy all embrace before an explosion. It was extremely powerful imagery.

By the time the movie was over, I was very pleased by the whole thing. Then I look online to see the cast, and when I find out who played Curtis, I about shit myself.

Curtis to me looked like a knock off Ryan Reynolds. This guy was dark. This guy seemed to be maybe in his 40s. This guy seemed tough, athletic, a strong male lead. Who plays Curtis?

None other than Captain America himself, Chris Evans. He is so transformed in this role, it was just utterly surprising to me. I don't like Chris Evans as an actor, and I still don't, but this role definitely gave him some street cred in my opinion and it worked.

I would love to give it a 4 out of 5, but I generally do save those for really, really good movies, but I will give it a 3.5, and say that at the very least, it's not a waste of time to watch. Would I have wanted to see it in the theaters? No. Was I happy to see it from Netflix? Absolutely.

IMDB gave it 7 stars. I think that's very fair.