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Update, May 27, 2024: Due to health issues, I will be adding new reviews infrequently and posting old reviews from my archive. I will cont...

Monday, November 17, 2025

Save the Green Planet! (2003)

★★★
Capsule Review

Paranoia fuels this little shocker from South Korea. In Save the Green Planet!, a loner and conspiracy theorist kidnaps a high-profile C.E.O. and holds him hostage because he is convinced that this public figure is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) and his girlfriend Suni (Hwang Jeong) bind and gag their victim Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-sik) and torture him until he confesses. I watched this after watching the American remake Bugonia, and the remake is the better version of the same story. Writer and director Jang Joon-hwan came up with this highly original concept and filmed it with passion, but his completed project had room to improve. Kang's manipulation of Lee towards the end plays too quickly. I preferred Emma Stone's calculating persuasion. Jang's movie is a great template, but on its own as a study of paranoia and the extremes someone could take it, Save the Green Planet! works well enough.

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