‘Concrete Utopia’ Review: A South Korean Disaster Film Is Like ‘Earthquake’ Meets ‘Lord of the Flies’
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Ninety-seven times out of 100, a movie makes its moral judgments for us. Yes, there’s a haunting ambiguity to films like “The Conformist” or “Taxi Driver” or “Tár.” But when was the last time you saw moral ambiguity in a genre movie?
Even the “Mad Max” films, in their visionary savagery, draw a clean line between nobility and treachery, speed-demon heroism and outlaw selfishness.
But “Concrete Utopia” is a dystopian disaster movie with a difference. This year’s South Korean entry in the Oscar competition for best international feature, it places its characters in a desperate, scary, do-or-die situation and then refuses to tell the audience what to think about them.
It’s a fractious, blood-soaked drama about the will to survive that feels like “Earthquake” crossed with “Lord of the Flies.” What’s gripping is that you watch it and think, “If I were in this movie, what would I do?” The director, Um Tae-hwa, kicks things off with a documentary montage of towering rectangular apartment buildings in Seoul, as a newscaster offers a drive-by meditation on how apartment living has transformed South Korean society.
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