Snowpiercer

The story goes that in 2013 during the pre-production of his film The Host, director Bong Joon-ho visited his regular comic book store in Seoul's Hongdae district. Flicking through what was on offer, he came across Jean Marc-Rochette's graphic novel series Le Transperceneige. It captivated him so much that he read through the entire series then and there at the front of the shop. Securing the rights to the plot, he would eventually turn it into Snowpiercer, his first English language film, and it's a masterpiece.

Comic book action and a great cast...

True, he was blessed with an astonishing cast of actors: Snowpiercer stars Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Octavia Spencer. But he's also a virtuosic director of bombastic comic book action films, adept at both lending subtlety to their larger than life characters and creating eye-popping set pieces with astonishing special effects. 

A futuristic tale for today's world...

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which an experiment to avert global warming has gone horribly wrong, plunging the earth into a new ice age. The last remaining human beings alive are living aboard a perpetual motion machine, The Snowpeircer, a train that completes a navigation of the globe once ever year. The plot follows an uprising of the inhabitants of the train's tail against their wealthy social superiors in the head. The plot is a clear allegory of the social consequences of capitalism, but Bong Joon-ho treats what could so easily have been a trite moral tale with panache and showmanship, getting out of it some hilarious character (Tilda Swinton's turn as a pompous, false teethed wealthy Yorkshire woman is particularly choice) as well as some nail biting action sequences.

Will critics and audiences enjoy?

The only worry is that, when released, the film will bear the scars of bowdlerisation by it's Hollywood distributors the Weinstein Company, but judging by it's extremely high aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes (86%), the damage seems to have been limited.

This is a bold new outing from a masterful Korean director and it's sure to be a hit with both critics and audiences alike.