Lee Byung-Goo (Shin Ha-Kyun) is a man on a mission: he is hunting down the aliens that have been exploiting our world here on planet Earth and torturing them to find out what they know and if the end of civilisation as we know it is right around the corner. The next name on his list is Chairman Kang (Baek Yun-Sik), the head of a giant chemicals corporation, so when, one night, a drunken Kang is dropped off alone at his underground carpark by a chauffeur he refuses to give the correct fare to, Byung-Goo seizes his opportunity and attempts to smother him with chloroform. However, Kang puts up a fight and looks as if he's getting away until Byung-Goo's adoring companion intervenes and knocks the businessman out. Now the secrets of the aliens are within their grasp...
Or are they? Are the duo in fact seriously deluded and there is no alien conspiracy at all? That's the question posed by this downright bizarre comedy thriller, which may not be a thriller, and may not be much of a comedy either, depending on your sense of humour. Written by the director Jang Jun-Hwan, Save the Green Planet was one of the barrage of extreme movies to come out of Eastern Asia and South Korea in particular during the 2000s, although this one took longer to find an audience than some of the others. It has a big dilemma at its heart, in that you don't know whether to take it seriously as a drama if there is an extraterrestrial solution, or whether to sit back and regard it all as the fantasy of an overactive imagination.
And throughout, the film keeps you guessing to an almost tiresome degree, constantly switching back and forth to take one side and then its counterpart. At first the tinfoil helmet wearing Byung-Goo's schemes seem completely insane as he shaves Kang's head to prevent him telepathically calling for help (hair is a transmitter), ties him to a chair/commode, and rubs skin off his feet (one of the aliens' sensitive areas apparently) and applies menthol to make him talk. Meanwhile, the police naturally take an interest, including discredited detective Chu (Lee Jae-Yong) who was supposedly framed in a bribery scandal, and young detective Kim (Lee Yu-Hyun), who is eager to learn from him.
What they discover, through a dropped pill, is that the kidnapper is almost certainly the serial killer who has been bumping off various people connected with his unhappy lot in life, and Chu, who now works in the kitchens, has a good idea of who that might be. He's right of course, and heads off to the isolated home of Byung-Goo for clues, making the mistake of not telling anyone where he's going. Spinning a yarn about looking for poachers, Chu bluffs his way into Byung-Goo's house just as the kidnapper has been trying to prevent an escape attempt, but the resourceful Kang is foiled and dazed in the cellar below (after killing Byung-Goo and accidentally restarting his heart by stamping on him in rage!).
Save the Green Planet takes a cynical but sorrowful view of humanity as it is revealed that Byung-Goo's main motivation may be the death of his girlfriend and the comatose state of his mother, both of which he blames on the men who own the chemical factory he works at. There's a class war inherent in his actions, claiming his revenge on the Man after years of being downtrodden, but there's no getting away with the fact that he murders people and feeds them to his dog. When we finally do find out whether he's anywhere near being correct in his obsessions or not, the film has become a feverish runaround, and the apparent compassion for many of the characters is at odds with the callous way they are frequently killed off. Worth seeing for its sheer lunacy, the film is difficult to relate to with its crazed plotting and shifting sympathies, even if unpredictability is its strong point. Music by Michael Staudacher.
