Save
the Green Planet! (*1/2)
review by Jon
Waterman
Have you ever felt like the world doesn’t understand
you? Yeah, me neither. But Byeong-gu has. He thinks that a
select few humans are actually aliens that are working towards
infiltrating the planet. Rightfully convinced that the government
won’t intervene, he takes it upon himself to find and
capture these “people.” Once they are in his clutches,
he must do whatever he can to get as much information from
them as possible, so that he can save the Earth from invasion
or total destruction. Our story starts with his latest catch,
his former boss.
The movie gripped me from the start. The opening credits sequence
was hip, fast, electric and enjoyable. Unbeknownst to me at
the time, that was the climax. What lies beneath the interesting
concept of a man who is essentially an alien hunter is a rather
standard presentation style. Writer/director Jun-hwan Jeong
keeps the visual side in order, but remains pretty safe and
conventional. The real downside is the cartoony computer graphics.
It’s possible that South Korea doesn’t have the
same technology that we’re used to over here, but it
still looks bad and I’m against them being used most
of the time in the first place. Byeong-gu’s house attempts
to be atmospheric and creepy, but that fails. It would have
been better to incorporate some more innocent, light-heartedness
in the space as well so that the audience would be even less
sure of what is going on.
You see, the movie’s main conflict is with us. We’re
supposed to figure out if Byeong-gu is telling the truth or
if he’s just crazy. Not too many clues are thrown our
way to affirm the former. His anti-alien gear is what you’d
expect. A lot of metal and antennae and rubber to block out
their “signals.” Everything that he states will
be old news to anyone who’s read up on or watched stuff
about extraterrestrial life. So, there’s no real back
and forth in our mind. We just keep thinking crazy. He’s
not a lovable hero. No one in this film is, which is a shame.
The movie mixes several genres together pretty well. You get
a blend of horror (it gets a little gory at times), humor,
drama, but just a touch of sci-fi. They tossed in a couple
stupid movie references, too. What they forgot to swirl in
there was the excitement and interesting parts. It runs a dull
two hours, so that any investment you put into the ending gets
sucked away. Readers beware for the rest of this review. At
the risk of giving anything away, the whole time you hope for
the ending to go a certain way. But it takes so long to get
to that point that when the desired ending arrives, you kind
of wish they wouldn’t have gone that route. You know
a movie is bad when they make you hate the ending you were
sincerely anticipating.
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