Film: Save The Green Planet
Release date: 21st March 2005
Certificate: 18
Running time: 113 mins
Director: Jang Jun-hwan
Starring: Shin Ha-kyun, Baek Yoon-sik, Hwang Jeong-min
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Studio: Tartan
Format: DVD
Country: South Korea
In amongst the seemingly endless list of horrors and gangster films on Tartan Asia Extreme was Save The Green Planet, one of the more extreme releases and unlike anything else released at the time. It’s not the most violent. It isn’t scary. But it is compelling, daring and totally insane.
Byung-gu knows that the planet is danger. Aliens from Andromeda are threatening the Earth, and he has until the next eclipse, only seven days away, to stop the annihilation of mankind.
Together with his girlfriend, Sooni, he kidnaps the CEO of a large corporation, whom he believes to be an alien disguised as a human. But the CEO is not about to give up his secrets lightly and there’s only one way to be sure he’s the right man – torture!
As he attempts to extract information, and arrange an audience with the alien prince, Byung-gu will have to avoid the attentions of an ace detective and the fiendish telepathic powers of the alien.
Can he contact the alien prince in time? Or will his past and the true reasons for his actions stop him from saving the world?
It’s hard to fit Save The Green Planet into any category. It’s part sci-fi, part thriller, part horror. With elements of comedy, police thriller, revenge thriller, noir... the list goes on. The debut feature from writer/director Jang Jun-hwan strives to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and largely succeeds. It’s visually stunning, superbly acted, with some outstanding moments of horror and suspense, with enough pace to leave the viewer exhausted.
With so many elements, and such a stark contrast between them from scene to scene, it can be difficult and sometimes frustrating to watch, but while the transitions aren’t seamless, they are handled with enough confidence by the first time director to keep the audience hooked (if not entirely ready to suspend their disbelief).
The film does fall down at the last hurdle, with the director seeming to become over-awed by his own creation, as he tries, and fails, to provide an ending in keeping with the frenetic insanity that has gone before it. Even though the film holds itself together (admittedly with some difficulty), it’s unable to withstand such blatant grandstanding, and the bombardment of morals and messages throughout the final act does nothing for the emotional core of the film.
Subtlety is not high on Jang’s agenda, and all the themes he wishes to express are laid bare crassly, rather than being portrayed with any sensitivity. It feels, at times, as though the messages have been shoe-horned into the drama, sometimes at the expense of it. Look out for a scene in which three people are killed while standing on a large green circle with the word “innovation” written in large letters in the middle for just one example. It’s a shame, as the film clearly has much to say about the nature of corporations, the sometimes selfish agendas of so-called environmentalists, and the state of working conditions in Korea. While these issues are not entirely lost, they are somewhat drowned out through sheer volume.
Fortunately the film works enough of the time to keep us entertained, and it shows enough promise that Jang is definitely a director to watch closely. The cast is uniformly excellent, in particular the ever-watchable Shin Ha-kyun (JSA, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) who keeps us emotionally hooked as we learn why Byung-gu has snapped, and about the long road of despair that led him to this point. It is this character’s personal tragedies that shape the course of the film, as it is through these revelations that we begin to understand why Byung-gu is the way he is. Though the list of tragedy is perhaps too long, it is heart-breaking and manages to move without lapsing into melodrama.
The other stand-out performance comes from Paek Yun-shik as the torture victim. When we first meet him, he is drunk and abusive, and for the rest of the film, he is either tied up wearing just his underwear, or a dress. Despite this, and the various other indignities he suffers throughout, Yun-shik manages to give a performance of extraordinary charisma, and the ambiguous nature of the character comes through in every scene, alternating between victim and monster, keeping the audience in the dark as to his true motives. It’s no surprise that the best scenes in the film are when the two central characters share the screen.
With such remarkable performances, and some genuinely moving moments, it is almost sad to see the ridiculously ostentatious ending that comes close to ruining everything that we’ve just watched. Fortunately, there is enough fun, horror, action and suspense on offer that by the time we get there we are able to forgive Jang’s showing off. Just about.
What could have been a truly remarkable and subversive experience instead becomes a barrage of morals, and what was supposed to be a shock twist ending turns out to almost undermine everything that has come before it. Despite this, Save The Green Planet shows enough character, heart, invention and bravery to be worth a look for any fan of Asian cinema. RM
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