Snowpiercer review: Jennifer Connelly rules in TNT’s gripping TV adaptation

I’ve been thinking a lot about survival at all costs lately – since theaters, bookstores, and museums have closed and I’ve started reading a post-apocalyptic novel whose protagonist lives by the motto “Survival is insufficient. ”

I found TNT’s new post-apocalyptic drama Snowpiercer convincing and up-to-date. The series with 10 episodes premiered in the United States on May 17 and thereafter a new episode was broadcast every Sunday. It will be available internationally on Netflix sometime in May.

Snowpiercer’s Showrunner is Oreme Black’s co-creator Graeme Manson. It is based on the 2013 bong Joon-ho film with the same name with Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton. The show is also an adaptation of the French graphic novel Le Transperneige that inspired Joon-hoMovie. The South Korean director is the executive producer.

In Snowpiercer, the show, the earth has finally succumbed to the excesses of humanity. The planet is uninhabitable, its core has frozen after “men of science” tried to fight global warming with extreme cold. The only survivors aimlessly orbit the planet in a 1,001-car train. You have spent almost seven years in this experimental and fragile ecosystem. When the engine stops, life on Snowpiercer does not survive.

Jennifer Connelly gets the juiciest role in Snowpiercer. She plays Melanie, the train’s hospitality during the day and an engineer trained in Yale and MIT at night. The woman literally does everything on board Snowpiercer. It can smooth out a first-class dispute over the use of the sauna (Europeans shame American passengers by not wearing swimwear), take control of the train engine, or try to compensate for the lack of methane gas when the cattle suffer from snow piercers an accident.

“You have to make sacrifices,” she tells a young engineering apprentice. “The needs of the train are more important than your own luck. We are engineers – we keep the world alive.”

The Oscar winner for A beautiful mind is great to play this multifaceted woman. It can be warm and inviting, imperative and authoritarian, or just threatening in a few moments. This role proves once again that television rewards established actresses with opportunities that can hardly be found in films.

Melanie, also “the voice of the train” and using Snowpiercer’s PA system to keep passengers up to date, had a big problem to solve at the start of the show: there was a murder in third grade. She summons the only homicide officer on board the train to try to find the killer because everything on Snowpiercer “survives from his balance”. The victim was an informant and another murder could cause a major imbalance in the system.

The called detective Andre is played by HamiltonDaveed Diggs. Andre also happens to be one of the reluctant leaders of the so-called Taillies, the passengers without a ticket who survive crammed on the last wagon of the train.

The murder investigation brings Snowpiercer a holistic aspect in its first episodes. You can see almost parallels Murder on the Orient Express, Snowdrift and everything. But that is no The killing: Apocalypse Edition. The murder is an instrument of action that Andre pulls out of his tail and with it the viewer can learn some of the intrigues of the train. When the killer is exposed, you will be more interested in a dirty little secret about Snowpiercer’s engine.

Andre describes Snowpiercer as a “fortress to class”, and that’s the theme at the center of this show. Snowpiercer comments on class and immigration with a population classified as tail, third, second, or first. The class grants its members very different privileges and rights. We are informed about checkpoints and boundaries to separate passengers. The process of upgrading from one class to another reflects the immigration system of many industrialized countries. The tail is Snowpiercer’s most suppressed caste. Tailies are malnourished and have no access to running water, daylight, or medical care. A new rebellion is always brewing at the tail, but we learn that the third year revolt meant 62 deaths and 15 weapons.

This fascinating TV adaptation lives independently of the film. It shares ingredients like the constant mentions to Wilford, Snowpiercer’s mastermind. Both deal with addiction to a drug called Kronole and use human-sized drawers as a form of population restriction.

But the TV show is less rough and disturbing. Their violence is less stylized. There’s no talking about how babies taste. It is not necessary to spell out the ingredients of the protein blocks that are fed to the 400 souls in the tail as dramatic as the movie.

The TV version of Snowpiercer made me think about the delicate balance between the power of corruption and the needs of the common good. While I’m talking to and rooting for most characters, even if they’re on the other side of the conflict brewing on board. The show also has room for welcome moments of human connection, including romance and sex.

Music is used sparingly and used on purpose. Like the vinyl version of Sealed with a kiss by Bobby Vinton one of the characters in First has the freedom to play. Or the version of Frank Ocean Bad religion The Madame of the night car sings in front of a hypnotized audience.

Survival is insufficient. Fortunately, we still have TV scripts.

Currently running:
Look at that:

What’s new to stream in May 2020

4:08