is a 2004 independently produced

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese film directed by Hiromu Nakamura. The film is based on the case of the

murder of Junko Furuta was a 17-year-old Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered. Her abuse was mainly perpetrated by four male teenagers—Hiroshi Miyano (18), Jō Ogura (17), Shinji Minato (16), and Yasushi Watanabe (17)—and ...

and it deals as much with the

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives fro ...

factors that produced Furuta's four assailants as it does with Furuta's suffering at their hands. The film involves four boys who kidnap a girl named Misaki. The boys

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...

, and murder her in a similar manner to the manner of the boys who killed Junko Furuta. Many people protested the film's release before it even premiered, and it was eventually relegated to specialty theater showings and a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

release.

Plot

Tatsuo Oosugi, a troubled working class teenager who frequently assaults his mother for divorcing his father and neglecting him, decides to join the

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...

to raise money for his future marriage with Kayoko Matsuyama after suffering burnout from his various low-paying jobs. Despite initially wanting to leave, he is given the opportunity to start a small gang called the Ryujin gang. He then recruits many of his friends to commit crimes like robbery and eventually, rape to please his seniors. One night, they see a high school student named Misaki going home on her bike. She is knocked over by one of the boys and Tatsuo pretends to take her home. When Misaki tries to go home by herself, Tatsuo reveals his true nature and threatens to burn her house down if she speaks up. Misaki is silenced as she is raped in a hotel and brought to the house of Takao Matsuyama, their friend and Kayoko's brother. There, the boys insert various foreign objects into her vagina, beat her and force her to lie to her parents over the phone that she is staying at her friend's house. Despite the horrific abuses, Misaki finds the courage to escape the house twice, with the help of Takao's mother in the second instance, but is nonetheless caught and punished by having her leg doused in lighter fluid and burned. Tatsuo punishes Takao's mother by beating her and threatens the other boys with murder if they express sympathy with Misaki or help her escape. After several more instances of abuse, which leaves her incontinent and dehydrated, Misaki begs the boys for water. Tatsuo, however, taunts her and fatally injures her by beating her further and dropping a barbell on her stomach. The gang then leaves the house to relax at a sauna while the dying Misaki expresses her last wish to "stay strong". After returning from the sauna, the gang discovers that Misaki has succumbed to her injuries after she is unresponsive to Tatsuo putting a lit cigarette near her nose. He decides to cover up the murder by getting a concrete drum from his old job and burying her body in it. The drum is placed in the open fields. Eventually, all of the boys are arrested and a detective who had previously met Tatsuo in one of his prior arrests angrily calls him a "demon seed" for trying to minimize his role in Misaki's murder, by claiming that he did not intend to kill her and only killed one person. The site where Misaki's body is found has now become a gravesite for Misaki as the audience hears her, via a voiceover, asking whether people realize "how precious life is". The film ends with an illusion of a crying Tatsuo in a dark room as he fails to make a mangled bird fly from his hand.

Cast

Sousuke Takaoka is a Japanese former actor, known for his break-out performance in the controversial movie '' Battle Royale''. Career His break-out performance was in the controversial movie '' Battle Royale'', in which he played the pacifistic Hiroki Sugimu ...

as - The main character * as - The victim of Tatsuo and his gang * as - Tatsuo's girlfriend * Katsuya Kobayashi as - Co-perpetrator * as - Co-perpetrator * as - Co-perpetrator and Kayoko's brother. His house is used as the kidnapping house and the other three force him to do so.

References

External links

Concrete movie webpage
*{{IMDb title, id=0434131, title=Concrete 2004 films 2000s Japanese-language films 2004 crime drama films 2004 horror films 2000s Japanese films 2000s horror drama films Japanese films based on actual events Kidnapping in popular culture Films about juvenile delinquency Crime horror films Yakuza films Japanese crime drama films Japanese horror drama films