What would you get if you crossed 'The X-Files' with the surreal 'Delicatessen' and added a touch of the Orient? Simply put it would be this madcap Korean movie called ‘Save the Green Planet’ by Jeong Jun-hwan (Phantom ). This is the latest movie of the Asian invasion to blow your socks off and it is a jaw dropping squirming sadistic mad as a bag of hatters movie.
Lee Byung-Gu (Shin Ha-kyun - Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance ) would like you to think he’s an ordinary Jo but he’s really Fox Mulder on acid. He knows they are out there and in the search for them and for the revenge of his sick mother and dead girlfriend he will stop at nothing to uncover the alien conspiracy that is threatening good old planet earth. Aided by his new tightrope-walking girlfriend, they plan to kidnap their chief suspect Chairman Kang – the CEO of a major corporation and the son of the Chief of Police (Baek Yun-shik). What makes matters worse is that they must succeed by the time of the next lunar eclipse!
No sooner said, the pair kidnap, drug and shave the head of the said CEO. He’s tied to a torture chair and its time to get the invasion information out of him weather by anal probe or hot irons to the nipples we just need to wait and see.Hot shot policeman Kim (Lee Ju-hyeon) is persuing the trail of a series of murders and enlists the help of a rogue ex-cop, Choo (Lee Jae-yong) to track down the murderer. They uncover clues but red tape and the local bully get in the way of things.
Everyone is on a race against time.
This is not a movie for the family Sunday afternoon and your Granny will probably not like it and there are a few scenes Hannibal Lecter would be proud of. This is a splendidly funny sci-fi tale with patches of the darkest humour and some jarring violence and torture flung in for good measure… it’s what you would get if Tim Burton and Takashi Miike joined forces.
This goofball movie references and pokes fun at the best of them and still holds it’s head up high. From '2001, A Space Odyssey', 'Blade Runner', 'Delicatessen', 'The Usual Suspects' to goodness knows what else… You hear several times throughout this movie the song ‘Over The Rainbow’ and that’s exactly where it is. Just do not expect the Judy Garland version.Again Tartan has added the usual Korean Dolby Digital 2.0 channel and the 5.1 Surround and DTS options with crisp English removable subtitles. Included too, is a director’s commentary, in which he is joined by the main lead. This is also in Korean with English subtitles and despite that they seem to be laughing most of time there’s plenty of fun to be had.
So after leaving disc 1 with it’s anal probes, geysers of the red stuff and Derek Jarman aliens with telepathic hair we come to the action packed and straining at the seems disc 2. And oh my lord are the goodies here!
Eight featurettes showing all aspects of the movie and with good humour covering everything and I do mean everything. Eight sections of interviews too, including questions from the fan club (yes that is how big the movie is in the East and rightfully so).
There are nine deletes scenes, each with an introduction by the director and they range from the wicked, involving a penis ring to bodily dismemberment, to small snippets of character development cut for running time. The last of this batch is just the storyboarding for an abandoned sequence again using the ‘Over the Rainbow’ as its music cue. In short this is an entertaining 13 minutes worth.
Last of the extras is a short by the director, this is a small and rough animation from 1993 and has a director voiceover due to problems with the original music track. It’s not earth shattering but it is a nice inclusion and a thank you should go to Tartan for adding it here. A great bonus disc to a great movie but make sure you have a full day free.
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