Ridiculous, cliche ridden and gleefully cruel is a hell of a trifecta, and yet Snowpiercer nails all three. In fairness, I clicked STOP after 15 minutes, seriously sickened and sadly stupefied, only the second time out of thousands of movies watched that I’ve not stuck it out till the end.1 But, Snowpiercer had to be gonged.
On one hand, this wasn’t a surprise since Climate Crisis movies are typically ridiculous. The Day After Tomorrow comes to mind. These apocalyptic movies are highly esteemed in the gothams of Seoul, L.A. and NYC because they make tangible the doomsday religiosity of ardent climatists, those self-absorbed sophisticates who make the big money in fancy urban centers or who become a Time magazine covergirl.
OTOH, Bong Joon Ho created two perfect movies in the years since Snowpiercer, so it’s kinda shocking that the predecessor to Okja and Parasite is a stinker. Ah well, bad Bong exists. I’ll just have to deal with it.
1 The Crow, with the late Brandon Lee, was the other, way back in 1994. I was reluctant to see it because Bruce Lee’s son died on set. Then my soul was about to die in the theater, so I got up and walked out.