Rating: NR | Runtime: 130 minutes
Release Date: August 9th, 2023 (South Korea) / December 8th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Lotte Entertainment / 815 Pictures / Seismic Releasing
Director(s): Tae-hwa Eom
Writer(s): Tae-hwa Eom & Lee Shin-ji / Kim Soong-nyung (webtoon Pleasant Outcast – Part II)

Let’s all live well together.

For those who don’t understand that “The Walking Dead” is about the living monsters rather than the undead ones, director Tae-hwa Eom and co-writer Lee Shin-ji’s Concrete Utopia might be able to drive the point home. Why? Because the living monsters are the only ones available in their webtoon adaptation (Kim Soongnyung’s “Pleasant Bullying”). The horde of murderous outsiders looking to take over apartment complex delegate Yeong-tak’s (Lee Byung-hun) home aren’t zombies. They’re desperate men and women just like those inside the walls. They simply weren’t lucky enough to reside within the only building spared from an apocalyptic earthquake.

So, is it really a utopia? Or a fortress under siege? Are the inhabitants worthy of the comfort and security fate let them retain while the rest of the city freezes amidst the rubble? Or are they tyrants monopolizing their fortune and using delusions of grandeur as “the chosen” to steal and kill with impunity? It truly is the same central question behind Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard’s comic books. Is Rick Grimes really any different than the Governor or Negan or whomever else his band of survivors happen across? Or is he merely benefiting from his position as our protagonist?

Eom and Lee deliver the end of days for these Koreans and let us watch whether compassion or greed rules the day. The residents coexist with the “outsiders” (soon to devolve into the label “cockroaches”) at first. Not necessarily by choice since they storm the doors out of necessity for shelter, but well enough to be civil until a food shortage starts turning everyone feral. Suddenly it’s “Us vs. Them.” A resident-only meeting is called to vote on what to do and Yeong-tak becomes their unanimous leader after selflessly running into a fire to protect them all. Cue the inevitable “evictions.”

What follows is the usual chaos this archetype produces. It didn’t quite mark me as effectively as High-Rise or Aniara, but its slow descent into Hell as tensions and betrayals mount is effective. Credit the de facto leads in Min-sung (Park Seo-joon) and Myung-hwa (Park Bo-young) as a young couple that isn’t quite as easily swayed to the side of cutthroat tyranny as most. She’s a nurse who wants to help from the beginning. He doesn’t, but his conscience stays intact to ensure his many mistakes supply sufficient guilt. Will they be able to stop this out-of-control locomotive once it gets going?

I won’t spoil things by answering that question. Just know Concrete Utopia doesn’t shy from the dark depravity we know the actions of “ordinary people” in such extraordinary circumstances will reach. Not that this choice isn’t without complexity, though. Eom and Lee don’t have a season or more to play with the duality of “violent good” and “violent evil” via separate factions with character development. So, they portray it through one man: Yeong-tak. Lee Byung-hun is up to the task. He’s a very determined and very impassioned leader with a strong personality hiding his secrets. He’s hero and destroyer both.

How the film plays that conflict out isn’t surprising in its overall arc or demand that we question whether loyalty and protection negates the opportunism and deceit that allows it to flourish. The specific things that occur, however, can be quite shocking. There’s one moment towards the end that made me gasp as loudly as Myung-hwa. Despite being totally in character and believable in the moment, you don’t want to accept it. You still want to give these people the benefit of the doubt because you’d hope others would give it to you in the same situation.

Sadly, it doesn’t take a long time looking outside the window onto our own turbulent reality to admit that, these days, the benefit of the doubt is a luxury few if any deserve.

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Lee Byung-hun in CONCRETE UTOPIA; courtesy of 815 Pictures and Seismic Releasing.