Save the Green Planet! (2003): Finding Sense in a Crazy Kidnapping Story
Before the American remake, I went back to the original to see how it holds up.
I've heard of Save the Green Planet! (2003) back when it came out, but didn't have the opportunity to watch it before a few years ago. I must admit I was a bit underwhelmed, as it had been sold to me as a sci-fi dark comedy. Sure, you'll find those elements in the movie, but it's mostly a drama about a man who has lost too much that he eventually snapped and built around him a reality that made sense. It's a heartbreaking story that took a violent turn.
After taking a look at the first trailer for the American remake, titled Bugonia, I was a bit confused because I barely recognised the original South Korean movie in what I saw. It may not be a bad thing, but it made me want to revisit the Jang Joon-hwan-directed version.
This is the story of a young man named Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) who believes that a powerful figure is actually a toxic reptilian alien intent on taking over his beloved Earth. He decides to abduct the man (Baek Yoon-sik) and force him to reveal the truth on camera in his basement, which doubles as a film studio and torture chamber.
Following his heartbreaking turn in 2002's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Shin Ha-kyun went on another revenge/kidnapping that ended in tragedy with Save the Green Planet! Once again, his performance was one of the highlights of the movie as he made a mentally unbalanced man as much of a tragic and touching figure as a dangerous menace.
Jang Joon-hwan, who directed and wrote the movie (inspired by Misery), made a film that, like much of the other critical South Korean successes of the time, found its originality by breaking genre barriers to focus on the human side of its story. We've got some light comedy elements, some really dark ones too, a few violent and bloody scenes, drug-induced hallucinations, eccentric cops, and even a sci-fi hook which delivered a truly confounding conclusion.
Some parts didn't work that much for me, I must say. The whole detective angle had a reason to exist. It's a kidnapping case after all. But the characters felt, at times, only a necessity, one that didn't justify the way they were written. One cop is kind of an alone genius, while the other is one of his fans. They were marginalised in a way that added little to the plot.
And there are the sci-fi elements. I don't want to divulge too much about that, but I still say that concluding the story a few minutes earlier and cutting all of that out would have made a better movie.
Save the Green Planet! really made sense when it focuses on its unstable kidnapper, who believes he is going to save the Earth from aliens. As we progressively learn, he didn't come to that conclusion without reason, as his life of suffering pushed him towards the only explanation that made sense of everything that had happened to him. It's an interesting character study built in a way that is not heavy-handed. In fact, Jang Joon-hwan trusted us to slowly pick up the pieces of the puzzle together, instead of dropping everything on us at once. It's a more effective way of letting the sadness of the truth sink in at the right time. It gives true dramatic weight to some of the revelations, as we have been prepared to understand them fully.
I think some elements needed to be cut out to make Save the Green Planet! completely work. Unnecessary distractions and an ugly-looking (and absurd) ending hold it back. Still, if nothing else than Shin Ha-kyun's tour de force performance, it's still an interesting movie to watch.
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