<\/p>\n
Professional setbacks can be opportunities in disguise: a chance to look inward, take stock and grow as a person. Or, if you\u2019re the protagonist of Park Chan-wook<\/a>\u2019s bleakly comedic thriller, you can bypass all that and just kill your rivals. In today\u2019s brutal job market, murder might be a smarter career move than networking.<\/p>\n \u201cNo Other Choice,\u201d which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the International People\u2019s Choice Award at Toronto, starts off all too familiarly. Man-su (Lee Byung-Hun<\/a>) has been a model executive at Solar Paper for 25 years \u2014 he was once named \u201cPulp Man of the Year\u201d \u2014 and has secured a comfortable middle-class life with his beautiful wife Miri (Son Yejin) and their two children. Barbecuing one day with the family, he takes in their gorgeous house, the one he grew up in that he managed to buy as an adult, and allows himself a moment to savor his good fortune.<\/p>\n Little does he know that providence is about to run out: Solar Paper is soon acquired by an American company and his job is terminated. Man-su vows to find meaningful work within three months but more than a year later, he\u2019s still looking, falling dangerously behind on his mortgage payments.<\/p>\n If Park\u2019s film begins as another lament for our layoff-laden modern world, the South Korean director soon introduces a sinister twist. Frustrated that he cannot land a comparable executive position in the cutthroat paper industry \u2014 and envious of a snide manager (Park Hee Son) at Moon Paper, a top rival firm \u2014 Man-su concocts a two-pronged plan. He aims to both kill the manager and also eliminate any possible competitors for the vacant position.<\/p>\n That requires Man-su to anonymously set up his own fake paper company, collecting r\u00e9sum\u00e9s from other out-of-work executives. After evaluating which of these men has more impressive credentials than he does, he\u2019ll plot their demise, thereby securing the cushy Moon Paper role for himself.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a monstrous idea and also a clever one \u2014 not that Man-su and Park were the first to think of it. \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d is based off late author Donald E. Westlake<\/a>\u2019s 1997 novel \u201cThe Ax,\u201d which was previously adapted by \u201cZ\u201d director Costa-Gavras. (Park dedicates his film to Costa-Gavras.) But Man-su, who has devoted his life to the careful cultivation of paper products while everyone else has gone digital, has an easier time setting his crime in motion than in executing it. Turns out, killing people is really difficult. Park stages Man-su\u2019s homicide attempts as slapstick set pieces in which our clumsy antihero himself barely gets out alive.<\/p>\n Early in Park\u2019s career, in films such as \u201cSympathy for Mr. Vengeance\u201d<\/a> and \u201cOldboy,\u201d<\/a> he specialized in bloody genre fare, emerging as a stylish B-movie auteur. But with the lush 2016 erotic thriller \u201cThe Handmaiden\u201d<\/a> and 2022\u2019s elegantly Hitchcockian \u201cDecision to Leave,\u201d<\/a> Park has recently shown an interest in toying with the tony trappings of \u201cprestige\u201d pictures while remaining enamored with lurid pulp fiction.<\/p>\n Strikingly, \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d plays like a melding of his different eras, once again diving into his characters\u2019 rotten souls while flexing sumptuous craft and bitter commentary. But the tone is often more satiric than somber, Park highlighting Man-su\u2019s foibles and insecurities. (An entire sequence has Man-su comically flailing to rip his wife\u2019s undergarments off to prove that she\u2019s having an affair with her boss.) \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d is frequently sexy and mischievous, even when Man-su attracts the police\u2019s suspicion as the bodies start piling up.<\/p>\n The film may initially present Man-su as a sympathetic family man trying to make ends meet, but Lee quickly subverts those sentiments once Man-su\u2019s methodical process betrays no sense of remorse. Initially, this nondescript executive is ill-equipped at murder, but it\u2019s not because he feels bad \u2014 it\u2019s just that he needs more practice. Provocatively amoral, \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d suggests that, like any job skill, killing simply requires a little dedication and initiative. The results speak for themselves. If anything, homicide isn\u2019t just advantageous for Man-su professionally but also at home, unexpectedly strengthening his bond with Miri, a divorc\u00e9e who has become accustomed to being a stay-at-home mom.<\/p>\n Park\u2019s approach may be pleasingly shocking, but it isn\u2019t always novel. \u201cNo Other Choice\u201d bluntly depicts a contemporary workforce decimated by AI and cost-cutting, but its view of alienated labor and thwarted masculinity has roots in indelible works such as \u201cParasite\u201d<\/a> and \u201cBreaking Bad.\u201d<\/a> And for all its dark comedy, the movie is most cutting when it moves away from the big set pieces and, instead, examines the small ways that employees lose their humanity to a capitalist system that\u2019s out to destroy them. Like the trees cut down and pulverized to make Man-su\u2019s beloved paper products, ultimately we\u2019re all being fed into the shredder.<\/p>\n ‘No Other Choice’<\/p>\n In Korean, with subtitles<\/p>\n Rated: R, for violence, language and some sexual content<\/p>\n Running time: 2 hours, 19 minutes<\/p>\n Playing: Now in theaters<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Professional setbacks can be opportunities in disguise: a chance to look inward, take stock and grow as a person. Or, if you\u2019re the protagonist of Park Chan-wook\u2019s bleakly comedic thriller, you can bypass all that and just kill your rivals. In today\u2019s brutal job market, murder might be a smarter career move than networking. \u201cNo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2224767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/No-Other-Choice-review-Thriller-combines-jolts-with-economic-anxiety.com2Fa52Fee2Ffc91a9444df48915b1431e9b.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2224768,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224766\/revisions\/2224768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2224767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2224766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2224766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}