After being laid off and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager descends into violence in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity.
Rated 5.0 / 5 from 1 log on Katalog
Noone does it like Park Chan-wook, I could watch his movies without subs and without speaking Korean because the way he manages to squeeze these little creative flourishes into every single shot is unmatched. This film, like most of his films, is worth watching just because of that. For example, #[movie:705996:Decision to Leave (2022)] left me feeling "meh", but some of the shots are forever etched into the grooves of my brain, that's how impressive he is behind the camera. This is a different story though, No Other Choice is a lot more engaging and kept me hooked from the beginning to the very end. People will inevitably compare it to Parasite (probably just because they're both Korean movies), and while they do cover some similar topics, I see them most as standing side-by-side than one in another's shadow. The film follows an upper class family as they're forced to adjust their lifestyle because the patriarch lost his job at a paper company. But his family isn't worried about putting food on the table, they need to stop taking tennis lessons, the matriarch is forced to work a part time job and they have to cancel Netflix 🙀 Pushed by these extreme conditions, and the extreme pressure put on unemployed men in South Korea, Man-Su figures out that killing only three men can practically guarantee him a new position at Moon Paper. While I found films like Parasite more emotionally engaging, I respect Park for finding his own edgier way of critiquing late stage capitalism. And no point throughout the film did I find myself really rooting for Man-Su, as him and everyone else in the ruthless corporate food chain endlessly repeat to themselves that they had "no other choice". Park uses the form of dark comedy to hold up a mirror to pretty much every socioeconomic class except the lower that delivers a much more cinycal sting. There's no good guys, there's no winning, it's just a depressing display of where our society is heading. How far will Man-Su go to avoid falling into a lower tax bracket? And which point will it stop being funny? There's a lot more to say but I have to leave now, might edit in more later 😉 One of the best films I've seen this year, a must watch.
