“All things flow from the sacred engine…The engine is forever.” The passengers on the titular train in Bong Joon-ho’s grim, post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale essentially deify the locomotive that is their salvation. This “rattling ark” carries the last remainders of humanity, after an attempt to reverse global warming goes terribly awry, plunging the planet into an extinction-event deep freeze. Extinction for all but those on this endlessly circling, perpetual-motion-driven train that can’t stop, or else these few survivors will meet the same fate. When the movie begins, they’ve been running non-stop for 17 years.
There’s nothing subtle about the allegorical implications of this messianic express, nor any of the other metaphors piled up like the ice and snow the train blasts through relentlessly. For the survivors, this technological marvel has become a religion, and as such, dictates appropriate behavior for its acolytes – be they willing followers or not. Science and religion become blurred here, both flawed, but flawed via their filtration through humankind. Even near extinction, humanity finds ways to continue perpetuating cruel class systems and authoritarian oppression of the many to benefit the few.
So it is that those designated poor live in the tail of the train in absolute squalor, sleeping on top of one another and subsisting on gelantinous brown “protein blocks.” (The revelation of their contents, while not people, still packs a disgusting Soylent Green-style shock.) They’re regularly beaten, arbitrarily tortured, and punished to maintain order, As one moves up towards the front, there are cars for the sick, for prisoners, for water management and food production, eventually leading to opulence and drug-addled decadence up front.
Curtis (Chris Evans, in brooding, dangerous contrast to his Captain America performances) is a tail resident with a plan to upset the order of things, planning a car-by-car push forward to take control of the engine from its creator and the Snowpiercer’s de facto king — a mysterious, Oz-like figure called Wilford (Ed Harris). No need to follow the yellow brick road; there’s but one way from back to front, and Curtis has a small army of tail section comrades, as well as a trio of more vital misfit sidekicks: Gilliam (John Hurt), a wizened multiple amputee who acts as mentor; Namgoong (Bong regular Song Kang-ho), a sprung prisoner who can hotwire the doors between cars; and Edgar (Jamie Bell), a hot-headed youth with no memories of life before the train. Their nemesis: a wicked witch of a bureaucrat, Mason, played by Tilda Swinton with blackly comic vigor and a fearsome dental appliance.