By George & Josh Bate
With titles like Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave under his belt, Park Chan-wook has established himself as one of the leaders of 21st century South Korean cinema and, to many, one of the best directors working today. His penchant for blending dark humor with taut thrillers continues to flourish in his latest effort No Other Choice, a magnetic, winding, Fargo-esque satire of modern-day capitalism.
No Other Choice stars Lee Byung-hun (I Saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life) as family man and paper industry expert Yoo Man-su. When he unexpectedly loses his long-standing job, Man-su watches his family struggle under the weight of tightened purse strings as he has difficulty securing another job. Desperate to maintain his family’s way of life and the home that he grew up in, Man-su hatches a plan to kill off his competition for a job that promises to save him from all of his troubles.
Park Chan-wook directs No Other Choice with a level of precision and dynamism even his most renowned films cannot be characterized by. Park floods his film with seemingly countless arresting visuals, each of which possess the capacity to take your breath away in one way or another. He does not rely on glamorous production design or showy cinematography to craft a visually striking film; rather, he creatively uses camera movement and shot composition to enchant the audience by elevating moments that, in most other filmmakers’ hands, would have been mundane. Only Park could make a shot of a man drinking alcohol, a man holding a plant pot over his head, or a man showing another person an iPad screen feel so mesmerizing and, dare we say, delightful. Park deftly knows when to tone down the style in favor of emotion and narrative and, conversely, when to notch the style back up again to achieve a masterclass in visual storytelling. In turn, even relative lulls in the story pop with innovative directing that retains one’s interest throughout the bulky 139 minute runtime.
Backed by cutting-edge visuals, No Other Choice explores a story that bears resemblance to Fargo. Like the Coen brothers’ iconic piece of cinema, Park’s film, which is an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, tracks a series of increasingly morally dubious decisions of an everyday man pushed to his limits. Lee Byung-hun’s Man-su is introduced as the ideal family man, loving to his neurodivergent cello prodigy daughter Ri-one (So Yul Choi) and adolescent stepson Si-one (Woo Seung Kim). Man-su and his wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) clearly adore one another, and the spoils that Man-su’s lucrative salary has granted them. But it doesn’t take long into the runtime for Man-su’s world to collapse around him as he loses his job in the paper industry and, for months, struggles to find new employment. Like Fargo and other similarly plotted films, No Other Choice does well to build up our lead’s frustration and desperation before he initiates a deadly plan that threatens to compromise his morality. Never does Park as the director nor Lee as the star make Man-su’s trajectory feel unwarranted; in fact, their work allows the audience to feel great empathy for Man-su, even as his actions become increasingly questionable.
In keeping with the tone many of Park’s films are marked by, No Other Choice doesn’t let its serious subject matter foster a bleak or unenjoyable viewing experience. The film has a rampant sense of humor that manifests in one way or another in nearly every scene. At times, the humor emerges in more understated fashion, often through an odd facial expression or oft-kilter from Lee Byung-hun, but, at other times, Park goes to absurdist, even farcical lengths with some hilarious sustained goofs and pratfalls. A scene that takes place in a living room involving Man-su, one of his targets (Lee Sung-min), and his target’s unfaithful wife (Yeom Hye-ran) is a particular highlight, evoking extraordinary laughter and tension in equal measure.
The narrative structure of No Other Choice intelligently breaks the film into sections, although its latter half stumbles with pacing issues. Our lead Man-su has three targets he wants to kill: the man whose job he wants (Park Hee-soon) and the two men who would be his primary competition for that job when it opens up (Lee Sung-min and Cha Seung-won). The film spends a relatively long time on certain targets and a disproportionately brief amount of time on others, which renders the film somewhat unbalanced. With 10-15 minutes of trimming, No Other Choice’s second half would have flowed far more smoothly, but, instead, the viewer is left with several lulls in the story.
Arriving at its conclusion, however, Park’s film lands on a thought-provoking and urgent note. Themes previously masked by humor and a thrilling narrative emerge to the forefront by the end of No Other Choice. In addition to exploring expectations of masculinity in South Korean society, the film serves as a scathing critique of modern-day capitalism and the ways in which participation in the system erodes a person’s humanity and morality from the inside-out. It’s an ending that makes you reconceptualize the preceding film as a far more somber and relevant story and even invites the audience to look inward to assess what they sacrifice to excel in the corporate rat race. What are we really fighting for when we push for that promotion? How does an unrelenting focus on occupational success blind us to values far more important? These are just some of the questions that Park interestingly leaves the audience to ponder over.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
South Korean director Park Chan-wook crafts his most visually stunning film to date with No Other Choice, a magnetic, winding, Fargo-esque satire of modern-day capitalism. Serving as a masterclass in visual storytelling, Park’s film features extraordinarily creative and dynamic shot composition and camera movement that elevates even the most mundane of scenes to enchanting heights. A deft blend of the black comedy and thriller genres means the movie fosters incredible laughter and tension in equal measure, oftentimes in the same moment, as best evidenced by a rollicking, slapstick scene involving a threeway fight. A story that bears great resemblance to the Coen brothers’ Fargo in its tracking of an everyday man’s desperation pushing him to compromise his morals unfolds intriguingly and engagingly, albeit unevenly due to pacing issues in the latter half. After overstaying its welcome with a bulky 139 minute runtime, No Other Choice culminates on a thought-provoking and urgent note by scathingly critiquing capitalism and posing questions about our lead’s participation in the corporate rat race that have you reconceptualize the preceding film and look inward toward our own behaviors. If it wasn’t abundantly clear already, No Other Choice affirms that few filmmakers possess the ingenuity, manipulation of tone, and keen eye for visual storytelling as Park Chan-wook.