20th Century Boys: Beginning of the End

20th Century Boys: Beginning of the End

By

  • Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Mystery
  • Release Date: 2008-08-19
  • Runtime: 142 minutes
  • : 6.7
  • Production Company: Cine Bazar
  • Production Country: Japan, Thailand
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6.7/10
6.7
From 100 Ratings

Description

In 1969, Kenji, an elementary school kid and his friends built a secret base during their summer holidays. They fantasized that they had to fight villains who were out to conquer the world and wrote them in the Book of Prophecies. Years later in 1997, Kenji becomes a convenience store manager and leads a regular life after giving up his dreams to become a rock star. His boring life is suddenly turned upside down when his old classmate dies mysteriously and an entire family in the neighbourhood disappears. At the same time, a religious cult and its mysterious leader, Friend emerges and a strange chain of events duplicating exactly the events described in the Book of Prophecies follow. Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Who is Friend?

Trailer

Reviews

  • CinemaSerf

    7
    By CinemaSerf
    I really enjoyed watching this - though it's taken me two attempts before I "think" I have understood the chronology of it all. "Ocho" (Juan Barberini) is having a break in Barcelona when he spots a man from his balcony and again on the beach. When he spies him - "Javi" (Ramon Pujol) for a third time - again from is balcony - he invites him up and they have some passionate, but rather transactional (he even has to go out and buy some condoms) sex before spending the next day together. During their conversation, they realise that this isn't the only time they have met... At first, I assumed the next chunk of the film was the pair sentimentalising about that time when - ostensibly, "Ocho" goes to stay with his friend "Sonia" (Mía Maestro) and ends up getting pretty drunk and hooking up with her boyfriend (the same "Javi") after she had departed to stay with her grandmother for a few days. After their rooftop reminiscence, "Javi" returns to his own husband leaving "Ocho" in his apartment, only this time we see an happy family - both men, with a young daughter - living a contented, if a perhaps mundanely domesticated, life together. Now these scenarios can't all be true, can they? The timelines of who met whom where and when just wouldn't work. "Ocho" is imagining some - maybe even all - of this, and it's by no means certain to us which bits are real. That's what makes the film intriguing. The dialogue is sparing - we have virtually no words at all for the first fifteen minutes - but that successfully, I thought, adds to the mystery and the two men acquit themselves well delivering each chunk of the storyline - each being perfectly plausible in it's own way. Ultimately, I suspect the film is about loneliness and the psychological effects it can have on a person. Were any/all of these segments real, from his past, or idealised - and passionate - figments of his vivid imagination? That's the challenge for our imagination, too, and on the whole, auteur Lucio Castor manages to keep that emotional suspense running well throughout this short (ish) feature. If anyone can think of a more definitive solution - let me know!

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