Smugglers (2023 film)
2023
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- 2023 · Action · 2h 10m
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Dec 8, 2023 · Rated: 4/5 Apr 5, 2024 Full Review Lyvie Scott Inverse With brilliant performances and a balanced, harrowing story to propel it, Concrete Utopia isn’t just one of the best films of the year:...
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Dec 8, 2023 · Overall, “Concrete Utopia” is more ambitious than its execution, but nonetheless sustains its suspense with an emotional journey into the depths of what scarcity can do to humanity. Watching thinning food rations drive people to be their most selfish and foolish selves while holding on to the rules might be darkly funny, but to what end?
Dec 7, 2023 · Critic's Pick. ‘Concrete Utopia’ Review: Housing Insecurity. Love thy neighbor is far from mind when disaster strikes a Seoul apartment complex in this blackhearted social satire. Share full...
- A polished disaster drama with a bleak and brutal view of human nature
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By Katie Rife
Updated: Dec 8, 2023 8:21 pm
Posted: Dec 8, 2023 8:08 pm
Set in the last remaining apartment block in Seoul after an apocalyptic earthquake ravages the city, South Korea’s official Oscar entry for 2023 uses a single high-rise building – the “concrete utopia” of the title – as a stand-in for nothing less than all of human society. In director and co-writer Um Tae-hwa’s cynical view, people are selfish, violent creatures that are prone to cruelty when we feel even the slightest bit threatened. Put another way: Concrete Utopia is Lord of the Flies with a view.
In snappy, quick-cutting vignettes that map out the system that keeps the Imperial Palace running – if not necessarily a sense of geography in this claustrophobic space – Concrete Utopia builds a functional, immersive world. Every day, Yeong-tak and his men venture out into the rubble of the city searching for food and fuel, which is rationed out and distributed by a committee. Similar groups handle medicine, waste disposal, and even recreation for residents – and only residents. Outside the walls lie piles of frozen corpses, but the people living in the Imperial Palace have convinced themselves that they’ve been “chosen” to survive.
At its best, Concrete Utopia prompts the viewer to ask themselves what they’d do if they were given choices like the ones the characters must make. Some of its observations have a touch of black humor to them: One scene sees a gaggle of well-fed aunties chiding a starving refugee for her tone. At its worst, it’s just obvious, like the shot of a “Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself” sign on the wall of an apartment whose residents are being beaten for harboring “outsiders.”
Concrete Utopia is a disaster movie about human nature. Set in the last apartment block standing in Seoul after a devastating earthquake, this polished, character-driven drama is a whole lot of movie, in both good and bad ways.
- Katie Rife
Dec 8, 2023 · ‘Concrete Utopia’ Review: Even the Apocalypse Can’t Stop a Strong Condo Board. South Korea's Oscar submission follows in the tradition of films like "Snowpiercer" by suggesting that the end...
Nov 12, 2023 · Nov 11, 2023 4:08pm PT. ‘Concrete Utopia’ Review: A South Korean Disaster Film Is Like ‘Earthquake’ Meets ‘Lord of the Flies’. Um Tae-hwa's dystopian drama is set just after an apocalyptic...
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