Another Midnight Madness screening, Save The Green Planet was my third film of the day and I was worried that I may have trouble making it through. No such problem. With Save The Green Planet, first-time director Jun-Hwan Jeong has attempted one of those cross-genre films—in this case, there are ample elements of science fiction, comedy, and horror with traces of kung fu and serious psychological drama—that have eaten up many a more accomplished filmmaker. Hudson Hawk, anyone? And while Jeong’s opus tanked at the Korean box office, due to a misguided attempt to bill it as a romantic comedy, the film itself is an awful lot of fun.
Ha-Kyun Shin stars as Byeong-Gu, a troubled young man who is convinced that aliens from Andromeda are taking over the earth. He’s so sure of this that he kidnaps a local businessman that he believes to be the alien’s leader, planning to torture him with exfoliating sponges and anti-insect bite lotion until he reveals the alien’s entire plot. Is our hero a disturbed young man suffering some sort of mental illness? Absolutely… but he might also be right.
The genius of the film lies in Jeong’s ability to turn the mood on a dime, taking us from outrageous comedy, to some truly disturbing torture sequences as Byeong-Gu descends deeper and deeper into his paranoia, to serious psychological drama, to brilliant parodies of both the hard-boiled cop and sci-fi genres—the 2001 homage is truly hysterical—and back again without ever once disrupting the overall flow of the film. It works because Jeong has written his characters so well that they’re able to encompass a wide range of moods and behaviors perfectly naturally, and his actors all turn in top notch performances.
Anyone who follows Asian film will tell you that Korea has become one of the brightest lights in the region, and Jeong’s debut is a prime example of why. There’s a willingness to experiment, to break the rules, and such a high level of technical expertise that you can be sure the film looks mighty fine all the while. From cinematography to soundtrack—the killer punked out version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that opens the film is one of the best things I’ve heard in ages—to effects to performances, everything is pitch perfect. Save The Green Planet is a classic cult film.
Written by Chris Brown.
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