Snowpiercer (2013)

SNOWPIERCER  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Joon-Ho Bong
    Chris Evans, Kang-Ho Song, Ah-Sung Ko
    Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt,
    Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Alison Pill
In the year 2031, a man-made climate alteration has transformed the entire planet into a frozen wasteland. Hurtling endlessly through the snow and ice is a train, the train, on which all of earth's survivors exist. In the gleaming front of the train are the rich, the elite, the pampered and well-fed, the chosen ones. In the squalid rear are the others, dirty and desperate, reduced to rags and subsisting on gelatinous, foul-tasting "nutrition bars." The movie's about what happens when those in the rear start to make their way to the front. It's not hard to see the metaphorical implications of this, and the movie toward the end spends a little too much time explaining itself. But director Joon-Ho Bong makes the most of the bare-bones premise, taking an idea that's pure, apocalyptic fantasy and gunning it. The result is an exciting, high-speed action movie that delivers the bloody goods while giving you something to think about. Chris Evans plays the gloomy protagonist, with John Hurt as his crippled mentor and Ed Harris as the distant, godlike engineer, but for sheer eccentricity, nothing beats Tilda Swinton's performance as the ruthlessly batty security minister.