Rating: NR | Runtime: 118 minutes
Release Date: April 4th, 2003 (South Korea) / April 20th, 2005 (USA)
Studio: CJ Entertainment / Koch Lorber Films
Director(s): Jang Joon-hwan
Writer(s): Jang Joon-hwan

Don’t you know basic relativity?!

How great is it that Jang Joon-hwan conceived of Save the Green Planet! after watching Misery and being disappointed Annie Wilkes lacked depth? Combining the desire to tell a similar story from the kidnapper’s perspective with an absurd conspiracy theory that Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien hellbent on conquering Earth by seducing its women, he hatched this violent sci-fi farce wherein Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) becomes humanity’s delusional last hope.

It’s a wonderfully unhinged concept that plays with the ambiguity surrounding whether Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-shik) is an alien or Byeong-gu is simply crazy, but there’s a large portion of the runtime where that intrigue takes a far backseat to the resulting police investigation and Kang’s many escape attempts. This section of the film isn’t bad per se. It just pales in comparison to the overall potential of Byeong-gu proving to be a sane person in an insane world.

So, expect some narrative repetition and huge tonal swings—the whole shifts to pitch black nightmare when Hwang Jung-min’s Su-ni leaves and than back to silly upon her inexplicable return. Jang thankfully sticks the landing with the final twenty minutes, but there are so many plot threads by then that it feels like the movie ends three different times. It’s therefore a perfectly messy project to fine-tune via a remake and I’m officially excited to watch Bugonia as a result.

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Shin Ha-kyun, Baek Yoon-shik, and Hwang Jung-min in SAVE THE GREEN PLANET!