SYNOPSIS:
A fourteen-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother.
Ostensibly about 14-year-old Simo (Johannes Brotherus) and his quest for self-discovery in the drudgery of his Helsinki home, as well as Simo’s relationship with his soon-to-be jailbird brother Ilkka (Jari Virman), Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night aims for hard-hitting. But as the drama makes a dull thud rather than the impact one should expect from such subject matter, Honkasalo’s feature is disappointingly unremarkable.
The decision to shoot Concrete Night in starkly contrasted black and white is a mysterious one, only lending the film an unreality to offset the grittiness the story strives for. It leaves the film resembling the comic book styling of