Park Chan-wook’s recent film “No Other Choice” begins with a scene of a paper factory worker named Man-Su, played by Lee Byung-hun, in a group hug with his sardonically ideal family. The camera pans out to display his sizable house swarmed by a fleet of shiny cars and smiling golden retrievers — an almost comedically perfect life. But everything goes south when he is laid off from his job at a paper factory, and, as their money runs short, he is forced to take action. Desperate to weasel his way back into a management job in the paper industry, he decides to secure his financial future by killing off the other job candidates.
“No Other Choice” is often misinterpreted as a depiction of someone rabidly in love with their job, willing to go to any lengths to preserve it out of pride. Instead, it is rather a grim indictment of how capitalism fuses identity with profession. One of the first, if not the first, questions we ask someone when we meet them is “what do you do?” It’s never in regard to their hobbies or family, but their job.
Man-Su’s desperate attempts to crawl his way back into the industry capture not only the catatonic slog of unemployment, but also highlight the irony of the movie’s title; he does, in fact, have every other choice. “No other choice” is likewise the phrase his bosses use to excuse their layoffs. This thread of inevitability clashes with the bizarre, unwise, and unnecessary choices the characters make to finagle their way up the corporate ladder. His weapon of choice is a pistol his grandfather stole from a dead North Korean soldier during the war. The communist tool.
While he is plotting to kill the first competitor, he overhears the man’s wife arguing that he could salvage their financial situation by getting a job as, for example, a barista. He refuses and claims to have eyes only set on paper, not accidentally symbolic of money. Man-su refuses to pick up another profession. We’re used to the protagonist having to change themselves to overcome an issue — few movies present an unchanging lead, and even fewer feature a character so stubborn that their refusal devolves into violence. But Man-su’s refusal to roll with the punches is not an uplifting tale of resistance. In fact, his heel-dragging is a symptom of the invasion of the money-economy and the obsession with job status and class that it drags along, into his psyche.
The trajectory of the film is apparent from the beginning. It wades slowly through the first part of the plot, but more than makes up for it with visual appeal. The camera work is surgical, and the transitions are so jaw-droppingly executed that they often contribute to the plot. At the technical level, everything has been considered. This lends itself well to the usual postmodern weirdness we expect of Chan-wook, where linear narratives are scarce, and symbolism finds its way into every errant character, prop, color, and place.
Overall, “No Other Choice” is no glorified three-hour LinkedIn ad, but rather a long-winded but gorgeous cautionary tale about the myth of financial security under capitalism, and how automation has begun to steamroll its way through every industry.
