With his first international English speaking major theatrical release SNOWPIERCER, the brilliant Korean director Bong Joon-ho dazzles his audience lucky enough to discover this paradigm-shattering experience of a movie playing right now this July in an art-house theater nearby.
It's playing here at the Broadway Theater in Salt Lake City. I saw it with some family members and a friend last night, one of whom knew nothing about it whatsoever except for the title before going in. I kind of envy his experience as the movie pierced his senses from the darkness of the theater in what must have been an unexpected and shocking surprise.
One particular friend of mine on facebook stated "If the movie Cube were made by Terry Gilliam, with a smattering of The Matrix," when trying to describe Snowpiercer. Albeit a clever concoction of allusions, I'm not sure this friend particularly enjoyed the sheer inventive genius of this movie as much as I certainly did. Because Joon-ho definitely knows the "language of film," and he utilizes these sorts of past movie references not in a derivative manner at all, but rather in a wholly new context unlike any we've seen before onscreen.
The movie is at once action-packed, ultraviolent, and romantic in the sense of a grand grim adventure challenging the odds with equal measures of personal sacrifice and reward. The less one knows about this movie before going in, the better. For that reason I don't want to venture into spoiler territory here; I don't even want to put forth a synopsis. Suffice it to say, if you are a fan of the sorts of mind bending epics that a lot of us these days feel are a real scarcity in movie theaters; if you long for the thrilling sensation you remember experiencing decades ago when a certain kind of movie just grabbed the entire audience by the collar and dragged them headlong into a world of pure tension and excitement, then do not make the mistake of missing this movie if it happens to barrel through your city.
Take my word for it, you don't even want to know which familiar faces star in this thing. Avoid all information about Snowpiercer that you possibly can, and just go pay the price of admission and sit down in the darkened theater, and find out for yourself what all the hype is about. Because if Bong Joon-ho's first major English-speaking epic movie doesn't get the recognition it deserves, then we really are living in a dystopian time for movie lovers.
This is one of the most thought-provoking action packed movies I have ever seen. It is certainly a favorite of mine now, and propels its director into the spotlight of superstardom. Bong Joon-ho may now consider himself to be one of just a handful of directors I believe are among the top-shelf working today. Go see Snowpiercer before it blasts out of your city in the next few weeks. I promise you it's what movie making is all about. In a word, spectacular.
(In case you didn't know, Bong Joon-ho is the director of the acclaimed 2006 movie THE HOST as well as 2009's MOTHER. Be sure to hunt these excellent movies down online or possibly on Netflix.)
