The sons of Japan.
Link to my new review of Concrete (2004)
Unfortunately, Concrete is based on true events where a criminal juvenile gang kidnapped and tortured a young girl to death. If you want to know how sick this case was, just use Google and search for Junko Furuta. It’s just crazy to read how they tortured her and how many knew about it!
I have written about this before that Japan has a major problem with youth crime and the low penalty you get if you have done something really bad as killing a person, and here is another proof. But the parents of these kids are as hopeless as their own kids, especially if there is a father in the household who fails to keep an eye on what’s going on in his own house. Useless and spineless!
Defending this type of crime is impossible. The persons who did this shouldn’t have the right to live, they should die a slow, painful death. Spending time and money on these losers is a waste of time and resources. There are more important things in the world than taking care of these losers! This is where Battle Royale shines with its stance, a stance I agree with. It’s just that I don’t want the winner to be set free!
Concrete doesn’t crawl as deep under your skin as The Girl Next Door (2007), which is also based on true events. The Girl Next Door (2007) is a much more accomplished movie with an atmosphere that made me nauseous and furious. I never felt my blood boil when watching Concrete. This is an amateur production where you see things on the screen that should not be there. An arm that suddenly appears in a scene, is one of the mistakes. It always ruins the movie experience.
The actors are nothing special. Especially the girl who is tortured to death is awful. She is apathetic, which is understandable, but she becomes too apathetic and stupid when she constantly gets the chance to escape. She makes the same mistake every single time, it’s frustrating to watch. But if I’m going to defend her, she is in shock and her brain is probably not working properly. As I mentioned, search for Junko Furuta and read what these devils did to her. It’s disturbing to read, and you will also understand why it was so hard for her to escape in reality.
Don’t imagine a new The Girl Next Door (2007). Concrete is and remains an amateur production. If only the movie had a better director, we maybe could have got a darker version of Nobody Knows. Even if I love Japan, they have big problems there. And youth crime and the low penalty is after I know still a big problem because if they are under a certain age the penalty of killing a person is a big joke!