NO OTHER CHOICE

FOUR STARS When a career man loses his job after decades of loyalty, he devises an alarming plan to get his job, any job, back.

DRAMA KOREA Korean #NOOTHERCHOICE Starring Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin

You know you’re well into awards season when every other film you watch hits the 2 hour 30 mark, and so it is with Park Chan-wook’s challenging NO OTHER CHOICE. Part social satire, part comedy horror, part devastating drama, it’s all parts Park from the exquisite visuals to the off kilter narrative that borders on bonkers. 

You Man-Su (Lee Byung-hun) runs in to trouble when his factory downsizes and after decades of loyalty, he’s laid off. You dusts his resume and attends interviews that seem designed to humiliate rather than recruit. Aware his strategy isn’t working but convinced the only future is the job he once held, You dreams up a plan to put himself first the next time a similar position turns up. Posting a fictitious job, he compiles a shortlist of excellent candidates and goes about eliminating them in ways that are as absurd as they are morally alarming. Why such an elaborate scheme? Because he has, ahem, no other choice.

Stylistically, Park has polished his film to a point you can see yourself in its shiny reflection. His visual control is immaculate as he turns office parks, industrial zones and suburban homes into spaces of quiet menace. The use of composites and slow dissolves are refreshingly old fashioned. The humour is often dry and observational, but when the film leans into farce it does so with confidence, delivering some genuinely funny sequences amid the creeping dread. Social commentary about ageism, automation and the myth of meritocracy is never subtle, but it doesn’t need to be.

Lee Byung-hun is the film’s greatest asset. He grounds the escalating madness with a performance that’s initially sympathetic, then increasingly unsettling. You understand Man-su’s panic - the loss of income, identity and self-worth - even as his actions become indefensible. Park’s trick is making us side with him while quietly asking how far any of us might go when the system stops offering dignified exits.

If there’s a drawback, it’s length and tonal drift. At nearly two and a half hours, the film begins to feel like it’s circling its own ideas and they wit that sustains the first couple of hours slowly gives way to something considerably less uplifting. Still, Park’s command of mood and momentum usually keeps things engaging.

Ultimately, NO OTHER CHOICE is a four-star proposition: sharp, darkly amusing and uncomfortably relevant. It may not have the operatic punch of Park’s most celebrated work, but it’s a clever, provocative satire that lingers, especially if you’ve ever worried about the fallout from a change in lifestyle you didn’t see coming.

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