Save the Green Planet (DVD)

This is a jaw-droppingly bizarre movie from Korea that mixes scenes of gruesome torture and violence with comedy and heartbreaking profundity. Perhaps as a result of too many amphetamines and violent incidents in his past, beekeeper Lee Byeong Gu (Sin Ha-Gyun) has become convinced that an unscrupulous business tycoon (Kan Man-Shik) is actually an alien from the planet Andromeda. Lee`s frumpy acrobat girlfriend (Hwang Jung-Min) helps him abduct the

alien

and torture him into confessing. Meanwhile, a hangdog detective is following a trail leading to Lee`s hideout high in the mountains.Let the timid be warned: this is not the antipollution comedy that the title might indicate. Man`s inhumanity to man is certainly depicted--as in events like Korea`s 1980 Kwangju riots--but there`s more going on here than any one summation could describe: bees attack, a pet dog named Earth dines on human remains, alternate theories of evolution are posited (i.e. Noah`s Ark was a deep submarine carrying DNA samples); an entire lifetime of films, political turmoil, anime and manga are boiled down and distilled into one profound, multi-textual allegory. Adventurous viewers will be in for one hell of a ride, as this film dares go where few have gone before, yet it does so with heart and intellect to match its wicked humor and headlong momentum.