Save The Green Planet!: Reviews

With the help of his circus-performer girlfriend, he kidnaps and tortures him in a desperate attempt to expose his alien identity. With time running out, how far will Lee go to get his confession?

This is one of the reasons I love Asian cinema. Looking at the cover of Save the Green Planet (2003), your expectation is that it will be some kind of silly comedy. As a matter of fact, it was the cover that made me dismiss the film during its initial DVD release. Then, word began to trickle out that there was a very dark film hidden underneath that, frankly, lame cover. Even the first fourth of the film may have you leaning towards it being some Gilliamesque dark comedy, but the humor of this fantastically premised gem slowly leaks out and what you are left with at the end is an increasing bleak and mean little piece of work. Call it a different sensibility, call it bad cover design, it makes for one hell of a surprise.

Byun-goo (Shin Ha-kyun) thinks he must save the earth from Andromeda aliens. The boyish introvert is convinced of this alien plot, that they live amoung us, and he intends to kidnap a key player, Kang Man-shik (Baek Yun-shik), 45, the head CEO of Yue Chemical. Byun-goo believes that the executive is an Andromedon alien with the royal DNA bloodline that enables him to contact the Andromeda prince.

Then again, Byun-goo could just be bat shit crazy.

With the aid of his portly simple-minded girlfriend Sooni, Byun-goo abducts Kang Man-shik and secrets the executive/possible alien interloper away to his secluded home and begins to subject Kang Man-shik to a series of tortures that will reveal his alien persona. Of course, first he shaves Kang Man-shik's head because that is how Andromeda aliens use their telepathy- then he gets to the physical punishment and the mentholated rub. Meanwhile, the police force is deep into the case, with Kang Man-shik's status as the son-in-law of the chief of police adding to the severity of finding him quickly. Sunk into the shadows of his glory days, Detective Chu thinks he is on the right track, but only a rookie upstart believes him.

Save the Green Planet is a hard one to classify. It has an odd mix of tones, some comedic stuff, some heartfelt and serious moments, down to the just plain weird or fantastic, but all under a grisly and increasingly dark veil. Despite that comedic cover and the slight touches of comedy, the comedy doesn't equal levity. Calling it a dark comedy doesnt work because the comedy is so scant. I lean towards calling it a dark fantasy since that is the overwhelming feeling of the piece. Anyone picking it up expecting belly laughs will soon find enough electrocutions, hot steam emitting dildos, and pet dogs raised on a diet of manflesh to drive most of those giggles away.

By the film's end, it is revealed whether of not Byung-goo is crazy or was right all along. I would have been fine without the answer. I mean, regardless, Byung-goo, right or wrong, is clearly unbalanced and Kang Man-Shik, alien or not, is clearly tortured. But, up until the final reveal, it does a great balancing act. For instance, Byung-goo is fueled by methamphetamines and keeps a house that John Doe from Se7en would be at home in. He is crazy enough that when Kang Man-shik endures the homemade torture devices Byung-goo has designed, you feel both sympathy for the businessman and doubts about Byung-goo's wild theories. Eventually, Byung-goo's tragedy filled past also points to the roots of his possible delusions. But then again, Kang Man-shik does survive tortures that would supposedly (according to Byung-goo) kill a normal man?

The film lays the eccentricity pretty thick. The basic plot is weird enough, yet you've also got Byung-goo being an amateur mannequin builder/beekeeper. His doll lovin' girlfriend has, considering her physique, the unlikely career of tightrope walker. When your film is as far out there as this one is, I guess anything is game. Pile on the wierdness. Two things that aren't really addressed is just how Byung-goo came into his Andromeda conspiracy theories in the first place or just what good his plan of using Kang Man-shik to contact the Prince of Adromeda will do. I mean, just cause' you get Hitler's phone number that doesn't mean you're a phone call away from stopping him. And Hitler wasn't the leader of an alien race from another galaxy... or was he?

Director Jun-hwan Jeong paints an entertaining fantasy and also manages to slip in a nice nod to 2001. Its main fault is that it doesn't really have any message per se, it's just about an obsessed/possibly insane guy who abducts a businessman he thinks is an alien and then proceeds to torture him. Its a real midnight movie and, thankfully, this one is so far out there I doubt it'll be getting a Hollywood remake. I almost forgot to note, thanks to some good performances and surprising twists, the police procedure subplot of trying to track down Kang Man-shik's kidnapper is quite interesting and never feels like a diversion from the main focal point of the film.

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone, but there are aliens among us, working on a vast conspiracy to enslave or destroy the human race. Don't bother trying to find them, however. Their disguises are too good. And besides, even if you told someone that you'd seen an alien, would they believe you? After all, everyone knows that aliens only exist in sci-fi films (i.e. alien propaganda). But they really do exist, and if noone stops them in 4 days, humanity is doomed.

At least, that's what Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) thinks. In order to stop the alien plot, he kidnaps Kang Man-Shik, the CEO of a powerful chemicals firm, whom he believes to be the head of the alien forces. After shaving his head (because aliens communicate telepathically via their hair) and stripping him of his clothes, he locks Man-Shik up in his basement and proceeds to torture him, trying to extract any information he can. Within 5 minutes of watching the movie, it's obvious that Byeong-gu is absolutely insane, spouting off crackpot theories while popping handfuls of pills. But the thing is, he might be right.

Director Jang Jun-Hwan (who also wrote the screenplay) plays up this ambiguity incredibly well throughout the film. You're never sure who or what to believe, and he keeps you guessing right up until the film's final scene. Perhaps this "alien plot" is just a product of Byeong-gu's fevered mind. After all, his life has been dominated by a cycle of abuse and neglect, and this might just be the only way he can deal with the pain that has controlled his life.

Or maybe it's all just an attempt to lash out at Man-Shik, who, as we learn later, was responsible for the death of Byeong-gu's first girlfriend and the hospitalization of his mother, among other things. But just when you're convinced that Byeong-gu should be locked away in a padded room for life, some clever plot twist suddenly lends credence to his crazy theories.

Jun-Hwan also proves just as successful at playing with the audience's emotions as their perceptions. Although I saw many black comedies at this year's Toronto festival, none had me laughing as hard or as often as "Save The Green Planet". From the brilliant opening sequence in which Byeong-gu lays out his conspiracy theory for his naive girlfriend (with a punk version of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" rocking in the background) to his bumbling attempt at kidnapping, from his evasion of a nosy police detective to his bug-eyed responses at Man-Shik's denials, the audience is constantly kept in stitches. The script is full of clever dialog (including some hilarious sci-fi homages/parodies), and Ha-kyun's performance is deliriously over the top.

However, the film also knows how to make you squirm. The torture scenes, while not excessively gruesome, get the point across that Byeong-gu is not someone to trifle with. There are plenty of little twists, such as the fate of the detective who gets too close to Byeong-gu's plans, that will leave you going "Ewwwwww". While things do get a tad dark and disturbing at times, especially when Byeong-gu resorts to more and more extreme measures to get Man-Shik to confess, I would hesitate to call them gratuitous (although the crucifixion scene did leave me a bit queasy). Jun-Hwan knows how to toe the line, pushing things until you know that Byeong-gu means business without ever descending into needless gore and violence.

And besides, Man-Shik is such a total bastard that he probably deserves some of what he's getting.

But what really impressed me about the film is just how sympathetic and complex Byeong-gu's character becomes as you learn more about him and his painful, troubled life. There is much that is laudatory about "Save The Green Planet", but Jun-Hwan's greatest accomplishment is how well he develops Byeong-gu's character. And again, it's worth noting Ha-kyun's amazing performance. As the film continues, he transforms Byeong-gu from the comedic crackpot we saw at first into a tragic hero that you can't help but cheer for, even when it seems obvious that he's totally wrong. And the film's ending, besides being completely unexpected and absolutely brilliant, is also quite moving and bittersweet, a perfect finale for Byeong-gu's troubled life.

I'll be honest... I love this film, and objectivity be damned. This is the sort of film that defines "cult cinema", a priceless little classic that people track down, regardless of how long it takes or how much it costs, simply because they believe that as many people as possible need to see it. I've been unable to not talk about this film to my friends. As soon as they asked me about Toronto, I'd break into a huge smile because I was about to have the privilege of telling them about this movie. Simply put, I cannot wait to show my friends "Save The Green Planet", because a film like this deserves to be seen, that deserves to have people go gaga over it.

That's why the Midnight Madness screening of "Save The Green Planet" on September 12th, 2003 will always remain a treasured moviegoing experience of mine. When "Save The Green Planet" was released in South Korea, it bombed. For some reason that only God knows, it was billed as a romantic comedy ("My Tutor Friend" it most definitely ain't), and it tanked with the hometown crowds. But then it comes over to Canada, to the Uptown in Toronto. It plays and the entire crowd goes wild, all 900 of us.

Jun-Hwan was there, and when I think about what it must've been like for him to hear all 900 of us laugh and scream and applaud the way we did, about what might've gone through his mind when he was mobbed by people asking for his autograph or picture, about how he felt when he saw his film get the love it so richly deserved... well, it makes me a little misty-eyed. This is the whole reason why I watch and review movies, so I can get find little gems like "Save The Green Planet", films which blow me away and leave me grasping for words so I can sing their praises.