HondaReport.com Movie Review
Title: Save the Green Planet
Pupule’s Rating: * * * stars

MPPR Rating:
Date of Viewing: Saturday, November 8, 2003
Location: Dole Cannery/Hawaii International Film Festival

By Paul Honda
Saturday, November 8, 2003

Oh, those wacky film school students!

Whether they come from America or Asia, there’s something to be said for artistic license, and boy, does Jang Jun-Hwan push the limits. In his debut, Save the Green Planet!, the Korean director takes a simple plot and milks it to the last drop.

The plot? A crazed, almost buffoonish serial killer kidnaps the CEO of a giant pharmaceutical corporation and attempts to torture the “truth” out of him.

That plot, according to rural (try the breathtaking mountain ranges of Kangwon province) beekeeper Lee Byung-gu (Shin Ha-gyun), is a plan by aliens from Andromeda to conquer Earth and kill its inhabitants. Assisting him is his girlfriend of sorts, a former circus tightrope walker who tolerates their sadistic, homicidal torture of victims just so she can be loved by Mr. Mountain Man/Beekeeper.

Of course, the wacky Jang goes to the nth degree to entertain and gross us out. Between extreme torture techniques (I won’t bother explaining, but think Hannibal Lecter with a kooky twist), Jang eventually layers in subplots about each central character. By film’s end—actually, long before that—he’s painted a picture of gray shades for the two killers that lingers on sympathy without an artistic shame.

While Shin takes his killer/good son character all over the spectrum with obvious enthusiasm, Baek Yun-sik is amazing as the kidnapped CEO, Kang Man-sik. As the victim of various tortures, Kang uses his guile and intellect to try a myriad of escape plans, and Baek convinces us that Kang gets thoroughly into the bizarre, murderous mind of Lee Byung Goo.

In some ways, this is a standard detective mystery, but Jang’s penchant for comedy and sentiment either flow with the plot or get in the way, depending on your taste.

I found the extensive subplotting a bit much, but I’d rather have too much than too little. The fact that Jang never lets us down whether we’re in the basement/torture dungeon or on the streets is a help visually.

A hysterically ridiculous close is another sign that Jang is practically telling an inside joke that we may or may not get. He doesn’t seem to mind one way or another.

The Hype: An unheralded new director has plenty of room for experimentation. Credit Jang with exploring his territory with total abandon. Shin, though, is a veteran (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, JSA).

Strengths: Jang got so much material into the story that I had to wonder what he could’ve done if this were a TV series. His love—and I do believe he feels a need to do this—for developing secondary characters is a trait I definitely appreciated. The word quirky hardly begins to describe his deviations from the main plot and structure, for better or worse. Dry humor, irony and flat-out bizarro may not be for everyone, but I can survive a gluttony of grossness once in a great while.

Weaknesses: Did I mention gluttony? Jang goes over the top again and again and again. It serves some purpose in terms of plot and building momentum. But he certainly wasn’t content to simply tell us the story with good timing and some comedic elements. At several points, it seems that he serves up unnecessary scenes and subplots for the sake of piling on anything that came to his fertile imagination. Again, if overkill is a minus, this would be a minus. And most times, I prefer overkill than understatement.

Best Scene: Late in the story, Kang and a young detective face death at the hands of Byong-gu, but Kang delivers an immaculate description and explanation—in Andromedan alien terms—that gives them a stay of execution, so to speak. It is a tale that Jang relishes, judging from the lengthy footage and Baek’s entertaining, voice-of-a-Korean Darth Vader narrative provides. Must be seen to be believed.

Worst Scene: Generally, all the torture scenes were unnecessarily drawn out.

Summary: Jang sends mixed messages, and whether it is by design or not, they took away from the impact this film could have made. Of course, few make a masterpiece with movie No. 1. Still, for the multitude of grisly torture scenes (did I mention electric prods, needles and strangulation yet?), bloody abuse and sheer terror, Jang goes out of his way to show us the “insanity” of humanity through the ages.

Even after the film finally ends, the credits roll with a stunningly sentimental short film-within-the-film of the sadistic Byong-gu’s life. From birth, through his father’s death, mother’s grisly beating at the hands of riot police, and his own violent escapades, we see horrific pain. But Jang inserts a multitude of touching scenes of Byong-gu the child playing with his dad and mom, and the effect is startling.

If Jang felt the need to show that he can effectively shoot any genre, he made his point. It’s unfortunate, however, that he also felt the need to toy with the audience’s emotions. By not allowing us to settle into a sense of closure, he settles for singles and doubles rather than trusting his material and hitting a home run.

Still, this is worth seeing, no question.

Discretionary notes: Extreme violence and brutality. Plenty of blood. Nudity, but no sex. Profanity (on subtitles). Do not take the kids.

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