Snowpiercer Delivers The Misplaced Optimism Of The Doomed In This Clip

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction will certainly rule over the box office this weekend as it storms theaters worldwide. But while that spectacle is going on, one of our most anticipated movies—not just of this year, but of the last few years—sneaks into a limited number of theaters across the country. South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s English-language debut, the post-apocalyptic Snowpiercer, has been a long time coming—I originally put in on my most anticipated movies of 2013 list—but is totally worth the wait. To hype up the release, The Weinstein Company has released this new clip.

Snowpiercer put together an incredible cast of actors from around the globe, but the two main players are Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton. Both are fantastic, but Swinton is operating on an entirely different level here. Taking center stage in this clip, you get a taste of exactly how phenomenal she is in this movie.

In the near future, attempts to reverse global warming kick off a new global ice age, killing every living thing on the planet. The only survivors exist trapped in a long train, powered by a perpetual motion engine, endlessly circling a loop of track, unable to stop. Within these confines a rigid caste system develops. The wealthy live in relative luxury up front, with enough to eat, ample light, education for their children, and a variety of pursuits to occupy their minds. However, the tail is a different world entirely. Piled on top of one another, the passengers exist in abject squalor, surviving on gelatinous protein bars, never alone, covered in their own filth. As you can imagine, resentment bubbles and seethes until it finally explodes in full-scale revolution.

Swinton plays Mason, a representative of those at the front, a spineless bureaucrat who uses a new pseudo-religion and force to keep people in their place. You get the general idea from her speech in this clip. This moment comes from near the middle of the film, after Curtis (Evans) and the others from the tail begin a violent trek forward. You can see that the rebels are beaten, bloody, and generally mussed up. As Mason says, they have the misplaced optimism of the doomed, and things are about to get very bad for them.

Based on a French graphic novel, Snowpiercer also stars Song Kang-ho, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Octavia Spencer, Ko Ah-sung, Ewen Bremner, and many more. Though the film finally opens on June 27, it has been a long, twisted road. TWC bought the domestic rights to the film and demanded significant cuts. As the two sides battled back and forth, the film opened, uncut, around the world, to universal acclaim and solid box office results, including setting records for tickets sold in South Korea. But now it is arriving in its pure, uncut form, and you definitely need to find the nearest theater where this is playing and watch it ASAP. We’ll have a full review up this Friday.

Snowpiercer