Concrete Utopia (PG13)

Starring Lee Byung-Hun, Park Seo-Jun, Park Bo-Young

Directed by Um Tae-Hwa

Only South Korea, home of high-concept stories, can come up with this entertaining social-commentary movie disguised as a disaster pic.

And only K-cinema’s perpetual hero, Lee Byung-Hun, can ditch his good-guy image to play a truly captivating baddie to propel this deal which looks like the aftermath leftover after the zombies had their fill in Train To Busan.

This is a survivalist flick with an improbable premise of extreme urban renewal. That is also a fascinating, albeit too obvious, character study of herd mentality, power dynamics and complicity in an abject test of humanity. No, inhumanity.

An Armageddon-class earthquake strikes. One high-rise residential block, Hwang Gung Apartments, is the only real-estate refuge still standing. Desperate outsiders — labelled “cockroaches” — from the surrounding CGI-ed ruins crash in as unwanted space-hoggers.

Turning selfish, the legal homeowners vote to evict them, declaring “Our apartments belong to the residents.” Despite legality being iffy in apocalyptical times since “There is no difference between a murderer and a pastor.”

The residents govern themselves for order and protection in what begins as a democracy but devolves into a fascist autocracy. Sorta like Lord Of The Flies on a HDB-block scale.

Concrete Utopia: Park Seo-Jun and Park Bo-Young realise they are in the wrong townhall meeting. 

Concrete Utopia — actually Dystopia — carries this idea very effectively throughout to a well-paced, well-acted incident-packed level. It even looks like a comical parody of the communal absurdities of North Korea. Slogans are shouted, toilet hygiene is praised and rule-breakers are forced to denounce themselves publicly.

Lee is terrific as an edgy, complex villain with such guarded angry emotions he’s his own walking disaster zone. Folks worship him, but he conceals a dark secret.

His Kim Young-Tak, the half-saviour, half-creep, all-Gestapo headman from the ninth floor. Wanting a low profile, he’s instead voted into power as “Mr Delegate”, becoming the commune’s accidental leader.

Transforming the community into a disciplined food-rationing entity with hunter-gatherer duties, he leads a group of armed men to plunder supplies from holdouts in the wasteland. Park Seo-Jun plays Min-Sung, a young good-hearted ex-civil servant who wields a weapon following his cult leader despite being uneasy about his rage-filled methods.

Scammed out of his money, Kim is great to watch in scenes of violent self-justification. One minute he’s singing tribal-bonding songs. Next, he’s issuing veiled threats. “Neighbours should know each other’s faces,” he warns a young girl next door who knows too much about him. 

Frankly, this us-versus-them plot shouldn’t work this well. But the little truths in its obtuse details keep you glued.

Director/co-writer Um Tae-Hwa (Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned) fills his tale with familiar survival-story elements. There’s a Nazi-raid scene ripped off from Schindler’s List. And Min-Sung’s wife, Myung-Hwa (Park Bo-Young), a former nurse, is the bleeding-heart conscience who sees the humans around her turning inhuman and tries to help covertly.

It’s a kick witnessing such degenerative demise with the haughty haves striking fear into the hapless have-nots as Um goes one step further by throwing curveballs to keep the drama flowing. The best of which is the sudden appearance of Kim’s said knowing neighbour that throws him off his comfort zone in the disaster zone. 

Korean movies are simply and truly concrete masters of such skilfully installed unexpected tension.

Pun fully intended. (4/5 stars)