This is a dark comedy to its core, with a deliberately hyperbolic style. Though the screenplay is clever, director Park Chan- wook does much of his storytelling non-verbally, through sight gags, set design, action choreography and visual effects. Everything we see on-screen is designed to complement the perfectly calibrated expressions on Lee’s face as Man-su transforms from a clownish everyman into an incompetent yet determined criminal.
Rarely has a story felt so contemporary and so retrospective at the same time. Man-su’s plight couldn’t be more now: automation has made him redundant to executives who tout their new “lights-off” factory run by AI. Yet his need to be head of the household, and his obsessive fear of his wife’s infidelity, feel like relics of a slightly bygone era– or perhaps The Axe, the 1997 Donald E. Westlake novel on which this film is based.
NO OTHER CHOICE isn’t actually about a man reclaiming what society owes him. Its about the folly of believing we can own anything in this life, especially an idealised past.
Its November 2025, the state of the job market is bleak and NO OTHER CHOICE shows what happens when desperation turns to furious action. Man-su (Lee Byung- hun is an expat in a dying industry. The world of paper is not what it once was because so many cornerstones of the industry like magazines have withered away. All is well for him, his wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) and their children, Si-one (Kim Woo-seung) and Ri-one (Choi So-yul) and two dogs, until an American company buys his employer out and he loses his job. After 13 months of no prospects Man-su decides to take matters into his own hands, with violent outcomes.
Technological innovations promised to make life easier, but that’s not what’s happening. Where does that leave people like Man-su?..
NO OTHER CHOICE is an example of what happens when an individual’s sense of purpose is stripped from them. The director, Chan-Wook and cinematographer Kim Byoo-hyung are on another level with their work on this film. It is a mountainous piece of filmmaking. At times darkly funny, at others times horrifyingly real. The violence represents the way capitalism has structured our society with its own type of violence, as are the effects of miscommunication. The film is a thriller, yes, but at its core its also holds a profoundly sad perspective on the state of the world today.
I found the deliciously dark adaptation weirdly satisfying because a man will go to any lengths to save his career, even if that means eliminating the competition. It is funny, violent and above all, an angry satire about the dehumanising effects of the modern work place. If you are aware of the highly competitive nature of South Korean college education, the warped reasoning by the protagonist, makes more sense, dark, very dark sense.
