Park Chan-Wook’s 'No Other Choice' Hits a Nerve But Fails to Find Balance

The highly anticipated new feature from master filmmaker Park Chan-wook, No Other Choice (Eojjeol Suga Eopda), attempts a tricky tonal balancing act, one that feels akin to transplanting the dark aristocratic satire of Kind Hearts and Coronets into the volatile contemporary Korean industrial job market. Sadly, while the film retains the work of a master craftsman and his signature idiosyncratic style, Park stumbles on some jarring shifts, allowing wacky humor to short-change the pathos and suspense inherent in a hardworking family man driven to murder by desperation.

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax—and following the 2005 French adaptation by Costa-Gavras—No Other Choice is not without its pleasures. The cinematography boasts a gorgeous visual crispness, utilizing exhilarating zooms and crazy camera angles. The film features two immensely appealing leads, offers amusing jabs at the ruthlessness of capitalism, and culminates in an inventive ending. This conclusion serves both as a victory against the cruelty of corporate redundancies and as a sobering acknowledgment of the grim future for humans in an increasingly automated workforce.

Park made his international name in the early 2000s with instant cult hits like the operatically violent revenge fantasy Oldboy. However, his two most recent features, the sumptuous erotic period thriller The Handmaiden and the intricate neo-noir puzzle Decision to Leave, showcased a refined, elegant sharpening of his painstaking attention to detail and unerring control. Given this recent trajectory, the more wayward and tonally inconsistent style of his new film registers as a disappointment, particularly since this project has reportedly been a 20-year dream for Park.

It is likely that many of the director’s staunch admirers will embrace the broad comedy and outright slapstick antics, even if these elements ultimately lessen the stakes for the protagonist. Man-su (played by Lee Byung-hun, now known globally as the Front Man on Squid Game but one of the stars of Park’s earlier hit, Joint Security Area) is a thoroughly decent man whose entire life is threatened by a crisis, transforming him into perhaps the clumsiest killer in homicide history. It is central to Park’s treatment of the source material that the character manages to retain much of his fundamental innocence, even after blood is on his hands. Lee Byung-hun, a paper mill manager with 25 years of company loyalty, is ideally cast as Man-su.

The promising setup opens on what is almost comically idyllic scene: a birthday celebration for Man-su’s wife, Miri (the wonderful Son Ye-jin), held in the garden of their quaint, quirky house. As cherry blossoms drift down from the tree above, Man-su gathers his family—Miri, their teen son (Kim Woo-seung), and younger daughter (Choi so-yul)—in a group hug, complete with their two seriously adorable golden retrievers joining the display of affection. Man-su looks up and sighs with gratitude, proclaiming, “I have it all,” a line that in any movie universally signals imminent loss.

In a cruel jest, he soon learns that the expensive eel gifted to him by the mill’s management is essentially a severance package, marking an involuntary retirement. At work, he spreads the grim news to his team that the new American owners have signaled coming job losses, and he soon discovers his own name is on the list.

Park effectively mines both poignancy and mordant humor from a support group for recently unemployed men. Here, they work on their emasculation issues, engaging in motivational exercises where they assure themselves that their loving families will remain supportive as they seek new opportunities. Despite Man-su’s firm pledge to land a new job within his sector, 13 months later he is reduced to stacking cartons at a big box store.

At home, Miri adopts a pragmatic approach, cutting expenses—including tennis lessons for herself and Netflix for the children—and puts their picturesque house on the market, planning a move into an apartment. She informs her husband that foreclosure is only three months away and selling is their only way to pay debts and stay afloat. She also returns part-time to her old dental hygienist job, working at a practice where Man-su harbors growing suspicions about the handsome dentist having designs on her.

What most fuels Man-su’s desperation is the thought of losing the childhood home he worked so hard to buy back—a sanctuary standing on the very land that was once his father’s pig farm, where he loves pottering in his greenhouse.

He receives a tip about an open position at Moon Paper, one of the few companies in the sector that is thriving after cracking the Japanese market. The job would be perfect, except that he would have to work under his former cocky subordinate, Choi Sun-chul (Park Hee-soon). The subsequent job interview is a disaster, and his humiliation is compounded when he returns, begging for work, only to be rejected by Choi.

The instinct to eliminate Choi and take his job is immediate. However, a darker idea takes hold: in order to guarantee the position, Man-su realizes he must eliminate any other unemployed men who possess the necessary qualifications. This list is quickly narrowed down to just two candidates.

The first is Gu Bummo (Lee Sung-min), a man who spends his days drinking heavily as his theater actress wife, Ara (Yeom Hye-ran), rails against his pathetic surrender. While she concedes her husband is not to blame for losing his job, she shows nothing but contempt for his weakness in handling the fallout. The second obstacle to Man-su being first in line at Moon Paper is Go Sijo (Cha Seung-won), a gentle-natured shoe salesman whose true passion remains within the paper industry. Despite the cartoonish humor Park employs, there is genuine tenderness shown toward these men, who were so thoroughly invested in their careers that being kicked to the curb leaves them nullified and stripped of their core identities.

Reeling the men in proves easy for Man-su, who creates a fake company website and promotional video to draw out the serious candidates. Icing them, however, proves much harder for the inept wannabe killer. His bumbling attempts lead to embarrassing situations involving precarious stakeout positions, slippery mud, and a deadly snake bite that brings an unexpected rescuer. Lee handles the physical comedy with endearing awkwardness, and the character remains fixed in the morally gray middle ground between self-preservation and murderous intent—he operates from a place of having “no other choice.” However, the mid-section plotting spirals into near-bonkers territory, and the heavy emphasis on laughs tends to neutralize the film’s thriller aspect. Fortunately, the narrative manages to get back on track with an outcome that involves unpredictable swerves and a decisive intervention from Miri, who steps in to fix Man-su’s bungled efforts.

Park dedicates the film to Costa-Gavras, who held the rights to the novel and worked with the Korean director during the initial development stages, when the project was planned as an English-language remake. The presence of Canadian actor-writer-director Don McKellar as one of four credited screenwriters is likely a holdover from that earlier blueprint, which may also be a contributing factor to the herky-jerky tone of the final film.