In Donald Westlake’s 1997 horror novel ‘The Ax’, a recently laid-off manager at a paper company decides to thin out the competition in the job pool by tracking down and taking out his potential competitors as he vies for a new job. Westlake’s book was written amid the corporate redundancies of ’90s America; it struck a chord with the Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, who has been slowly working out his version of the story ever since. It arrives now – as did Westlake’s novel – in a society where the value of human labour has been decreed minimal, named for the refrain of almost every character in the film moments before they do something cruel and self-serving. No Other Choice sees Park at his most biting and brutal, but not without emotion. As bloodthirsty and impish as this work is, there’s more to it than just rage against the machine.
Transporting the story to his native South Korea, Park casts Lee Byung-hun as family man Yoo Man-su, who lives in a gorgeous home with his wife, Miri (Son Ye-jin), their children, Si-one and Ri-one, and two beautiful golden retrievers (Si-two and Ri-two). Man-su is devastated after being laid off from his paper-company management role after 25 years, and despite assurances from his wife that he’ll find a new job soon, 13 months later he’s stacking boxes in a warehouse, desperately interviewing for a more senior position. After a series of calamities and with house foreclosure pending, Man-su becomes truly desperate, and after becoming mildly obsessed with the cool middle manager at Moon Paper, realises the job market is simply too competitive. Wouldn’t it be easier if he thinned out the pack?
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Director Park’s eye for expressive camerawork ensures a sense of dynamism and urgency that brings wit to the absurdity of Man-su’s situation, whether it’s a rig strapped to a dog or the comedic timing of a low-angle shot as our murderous middle manager considers dropping a heavy plant pot on a rival to take him out. One particularly lovely (and amusing!) detail is a minor one: Si-one has a matching raincoat with the family dogs. This attention to detail and precision in the film’s visual schema creates a world where we understand the stakes, and although we might not share Man-su’s antisocial intentions, they do make sense in a bizarre way.
That the handsome but often pathetic protagonist is such a compelling character is a credit to both Park and the wonderful Lee, whose performance is a masterclass in the tensions between comedy and tragedy. Moments of pathos brush up against entitlement and self-aggrandising, and while it would be easy to dismiss Man-su as a middle-class misery who refuses to do work he deems beneath him, Park puts effort into explaining why Man-su feels this way and how generations toiling under capitalism create self-serving individuals.
Even as the death roll of capitalism continues to clutch Hollywood in its jaws, No Other Choice proves that, in the hands of a master, there’s still fertile ground to be found. His biting, incendiary dramedy calls into question how much we’re willing to accept – and how far we’re willing to go – in the name of preserving our own comfort.
