Directed by Park Chan-wook — Screenplay by Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye.
Whenever a new film from South Korean master filmmaker Park Chan-wook comes out, it flies right to the top of my watchlist. Every film of his that I have seen thus far, like his iconic, violent, and shocking Vengeance Trilogy or his phenomenal erotic historical thriller The Handmaiden, has wowed me. Just a few years ago, he released yet another masterpiece with the incredibly rewatchable crime-romance thriller Decision to Leave, whose style showcased Park at his very best and cemented him as one of the world’s best visual storytellers. His latest film, No Other Choice, an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax (which was previously adapted in the mid-2000s by Costa-Gavras, to whom Park’s film is dedicated), is yet another fantastic example of Park’s strengths.
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice follows Man-su (played by Lee Byung-hun), a relatively well-off and award-winning employee at a papermaking company, who is loving life with his family, which consists of his wife (Mi-ri, played by Son Ye-jin), their children (one of whom is a child from his wife’s previous relationship), and their two dogs. However, things start taking a turn for the worse when the papermaking company gets new ownership that swiftly starts laying off its employees, including Man-su. Though initially hopeful that he’ll be able to get another similar position in just three months, he is in no such luck. As the job hunt takes longer and longer, the family is hurt in the process, as they cannot afford to live the life they’ve built for themselves. They reduce their spending, Mi-ri starts working as a dental assistant, put their beloved home on the market, and have to rehome their two dogs. As Man-su becomes more and more desperate to hold onto their privileges, he decides to remove a few people from the equation. He decides to take out the competition by figuring out which people on the market he is competing with, singling out those who may have competing resumes, and actually killing them. As Man-su tries to execute his plan, his relationship with his family starts deteriorating.
We’ve likely all felt the feelings of nervousness and pressure that searching for a job brings with it. A few years ago, I spent some time on the job market, which culminated in me pursuing further education to enhance my job opportunities, and, at the time of writing, I am actually back on the job hunt, having recently completed said additional studies. It can be stressful, and it can make you second-guess things. Park Chan-wook takes those relatable stresses and dials them all the way up in a film that takes things to extremes. This is a film about what happens when what we’ve built up for ourselves starts breaking apart as a result of things out of our control, including automatization as a result of roles now going away due to AI and the like. Park’s genre fusion is quite an impressive balancing act. It never loses itself to its dark comedy or its darker thriller elements; instead, they work in tandem as the film both goes down a dark path and includes moments akin to the genre of comedy of errors.
Park Chan-wook’s film sets its sights on the struggles and stresses of suddenly being unemployed, but with few opportunities to turn your skillset into a job, due to the rapid development of your field of employment and technological leaps that take humanity out of the equation. Suddenly, there are very few openings for very skilled individuals. What does that do to a person? Park Chan-wook’s film focuses especially on masculinity. It’s often said that men don’t seek professional help, and here we have a person needing therapy and medical help, which is seen through his intense toothache and the way he, at one point, blurts out his personal issues to one of his targets. Some moments directly emphasize the universality of male issues through turning to the same solutions (alcohol), keeping your problems to yourself, and risking pushing family members away in the process. It is a film about how technological advancements can shove people away and emasculate them, if you’re not lucky enough to get one of the few positions as an almost ceremonial cog in the machine. It is all very well-communicated, and, like in Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wook is especially concerned with how developments in your professional life impact your personal life, your marriage, and the trust shared or lost between a married couple.
But it isn’t just about what something is about; it is always also about how you pull it off. No Other Choice, once again, is a brilliant example of Park Chan-wook’s sense of style and understanding of visual storytelling. The visual trickery that Park Chan-wook can put on display is second-to-none. The way he uses expertly designed transitions and superimpositions to tell the story adds a great deal to the experience of watching it. Like how images are superimposed over the main character’s face as he looks through binoculars, or how his daughter’s yellow raincoat transitions into an image of yellow trees near the road to where one of his targets lives. There are fantastic shots of drinking late in the film that I found to be so energizing for how well-designed they are. There’s a great match cut where we cut from fingers snapping to a Zippo lighter igniting. There’s a scene where he has the background and foreground work in tandem. I’m thinking of the scene where the background sees trees being cut down (as they’re being gradually turned into paper), while, in the foreground, we see our soon-to-be-fired lead character ready to be made unemployed (i.e., symbolically being sent to the woodchopper). He also uses the imagery attached to seasons changing (leaves falling and color fading) to the rotting morality of our main character, as is seen with how the home of the main character becomes more and more untidy. At one point, we see red peppers added to his vibrantly green greenhouse to symbolize how he now accepts going across the line of what is right and wrong. All of it is so sharp and precisely designed.
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice has it all. It is chock-full of energizing and dynamic visual trickery that adds so much to the textual and performative narrative. At the center of the film, there is a perfectly tuned, versatile performance from Lee Byung-hun, which fits perfectly with the master filmmaker’s genre fusion balancing act. It is dark but also rip-roaringly funny. It is yet another sublime addition to Park Chan-wook’s increasingly impressive oeuvre. The only issues that I have with the film are quite small. I think the film runs a little bit too long, ultimately, and that the law enforcement element could’ve been tightened up somewhat, as it felt a little bit loose on first viewing. Nevertheless, this is a thrilling and thoroughly entertaining film that puts its filmmaker’s strengths on display, while also saying a great deal about humanity and how we may struggle as technological advancements threaten our opportunity to feel satisfaction and security in our professional lives.
9 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 