When a paper-factory worker (Lee Byung-hun) searches for a new job, he discovers the only way to get a position to die for is to start killing.
Looking for work is tough, but there’s a difference between stalking people on LinkedIn and then just stalking them. Man-su (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) opts for the latter when pursuing a new position. Made redundant after 25 years of service at the Solar Paper company, after a series of embarrassing interviews and temp jobs, Man-su hunts down the competition for the next big gig and begins eliminating them in ludicrous, often hilarious, fashion.
The superb latest effort from Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), No Other Choice is an adaptation of The Ax, a 1997 novel by Donald E. Westlake, which was previously adapted in 2005 by Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras (to whom this film is dedicated). Entirely gripping, ink-black funny and formally ambitious, it’s a diatribe against the human churn of the contemporary workplace (a darkly cynical spin on Chaplin’s Modern Times),a sharp disassembly of masculine performance and, among many other things, a love letter to the tactile pleasures of paper and printed media and the human beings who work with them.
Consistently surprising and engrossing, the drama unfolds with elegant pace.
Smartly dressed and pristinely moustachioed, Man-su begins the story as a vision of professional success, speaking about the touch of certain paper stocks in a way that might better be reserved for his concerned but canny wife Miri (Son Ye-jin, The Truth Beneath). As his role as familial provider diminishes, so does his morality, the film relishing in realising his psychological regression. He gets lured by his former vices of alcohol and nicotine, the ’tash gets scrubbed, and the suit gets traded for a hoodie and denim jacket, leaving him looking more awkwardly adolescent than his teenage son. In other words, it’s a typical midlife crisis, just with more murder (his victims and rivals, from the lonely vinyl-lover to the large-car enthusiast, are more targets for the director’s middle-aged male dissection).
Throughout, Park confidently reminds us of his position as one of modern cinema’s finest visual storytellers. One scene involving a home invasion, a maxed-out sound system and a comical use of oven gloves is his most audacious and most entertaining work of screen violence since the famous corridor-fight scene in Oldboy. Kudos in particular must go to the work of cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung, whose probing camera brings a brilliant sense of intrigue. At one point we find ourselves peering up from the bottom of a shot glass; at another, we squint out from within the eye of a corpse. All this imagery unfurls inventively and imaginatively — via lyrical fades, split screens, and other innovations.
Consistently surprising and engrossing, the drama unfolds with elegant pace and flow, finding sparkling moments of true ingenuity along the way. It is, in myriad ways, a great work of pulp fiction.
Cut it, print it. These are brutal executions, brilliantly executed. Director Park has said he wants No Other Choice to be his “masterpiece” and he may well have done it. Hopefully he won’t be jobless any time soon.
