Um Tae-hwa’s disaster movie was South Korea’s official submission for this year’s International Oscar. It didn’t make the shortlist, and it’s easy to see why. Concrete Utopia plays like a genre movie, which normally don’t rate with Academy members. So why did the Korean Film Council, which had a ton of very good movies to choose from last year, pick Concrete? Probably because the movie’s genre conceits served a critique of modern Korean society, thus making it similar in purpose to Parasite, which, of course, won not only an Oscar for best International Feature, but one for Best Picture. However, the similarities end abruptly there. Though Concrete is at heart a black comedy about how ownership turns people against one another during times of extreme hardship, it’s also an entertainment filled with extreme special effects, disturbing violence that you would more likely find in a horror movie, and plot points that revolve around mysteries the characters have to solve. It’s not just a genre film, it’s a multi-genre film, and all the aspects designed to pull us into the story overwhelm its sociological themes.

The horrific earthquake that destroys Seoul and provides the backdrop for the action takes place before the opening titles. The Hwang Gung apartment complex comprises the only structures still standing for what looks like many kilometers, so naturally outside survivors flock to it for food and shelter from the cold, much to the consternation of the homeowners who live there. At first, they take pity on the refugees and allow them into the building. Some, like the meek civil servant Min-sung (Park Seo-jun) and his wife, nurse Myung-hwa (Park Bo-young), even allow several to camp out in their apartments, but after multiple incidents involving visitors getting into fights or making demands that strain the good will of their hosts, the residents council votes to kick them all out, and elect the brooding Yeong-tak (Lee Byung-hun) to carry out the effort. He proves to be effective, and after a violent struggle the “cockroaches” are banished and Yeong-tak becomes a dictator whose credo is that the strength of the collective is defined by the integrity of the home; meaning only owners have rights in such a situation. This way of thinking infects the complex and turns it into an authoritarian oasis: selfishness becomes the justifiable default mode of all activities. Bands of residents venture out into the fallen city to loot businesses and abandoned apartments for food and supplies, while a bureaucratic system takes hold within the complex that supposedly guarantees equal treatment, but certain residents demand a heirarchy based on presumed “contributions” to the whole. 

However clever the humor (fortified by the martial music on the soundtrack) or the mystery sub-plot of Yeong-tak’s shady provenance as a resident, the viewer knows exactly where the story is headed and all Um can really do to add variety is ratchet up the ensuing violence and intensify the bad behavior. Had Um stuck with his opening gambit of showing how Korea’s predatory real estate boom has made the country less secure, he might have created something more provocative. Concrete Utopia is a well-made film, but it rarely transcends its urge to appall the viewer with atrocious behavior. A better Korean movie of this ilk is 2022’s Dream Palace, about a new condo resident who fights against the collective for what she believes are her own specific rights as a homeowner. That movie doesn’t require a catastrophe to show how self-interest can corrupt, and stars the invaluable Kim Sun-young, who plays the head of the residents’ council in Concrete Utopia. In fact, some of the council members say they recently moved to the Hwang Gung apartments from a nearby condo called Dream Palace, which is obviously inferior in status—after all, it collapsed. As with apartments, it’s impossible not to compare movies that cover the same ground. 

In Korean. Opens Jan. 5 in Tokyo at Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955).

Concrete Utopia home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Lotte Entertainment & Climax Studio, Inc.