Since his breakout in 2000 with Joint Security Area, after a brace of duds that are never, ever likely to grace a western retrospective, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook might be one of the most consistently interesting and entertaining directors working in the world today. Even if you include 2006’s rather terrible I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK, Park’s style has always evolved, moving upwards and onwards whether thematically or technically, refusing to tread water visually or recycle old ideas. Bong Joon-ho is his only serious rival in that context, which is interesting because No Other Choice — an adaptation of a literary noir by Donald E. Westlake (AKA Richard Stark) — could be seen as Park’s response to Bong’s Parasite, a jet-black comedy that stars Lee Byung-hun in his most revelatory role to date. We always knew Lee could do action, but here he proves his worth as a comedy natural, a surprise slapstick master whose presence is an anarchic fusion of Mads Mikkelsen and Buster Keaton.
Like Bong, Park has a very deadpan way with sarcasm, and the opening sequence is simply dripping with it: paper company safety executive You Man-su (Lee) is celebrating his wife’s birthday by barbecuing rare, delicious eel steaks, a gift from work to mark 25 years of service. Man-su lives in his storied old childhood home with the perfect family: two children — a boy and a little girl — and two loyal dogs. Cherry blossom is falling all around, the whole garden glowing in a kind of never-ending golden hour. “I’ve got it all,” he beams.
Smash-cut! Man-su is at his workplace, where the incoming American overlords are cutting back and making 20% of the workforce redundant. Man-su tries to stick up for his team, who really don’t seem all that bothered, but the Americans aren’t listening. “There’s no other choice,” they say, and, seemingly within minutes, he’s on the scrapheap. As we are about to learn, joblessness is something of a no-no in Korean society, but Man-su’s wife Miri (Son Yejin), is practical and resourceful, dropping out of her tennis classes, stopping Man-su’s subscription to a bonsai magazine and cancelling the family’s Netflix subscription. After sending the dogs off to her parents, she even plans to sell the family home and, to Man-su’s horror, take an apartment in a soulless high-rise.
Man-su’s intention to get back in the saddle within three months does not go to plan, and after a lot of time in the wilderness he hits on the perfect plan to get himself back into the paper business. Advertising a fake recruitment agency, Man-su gathers up all the details of his competitors, identifying the three main rivals that will stop him the next time a suitable vacancy occurs. Using a strategy not unlike that of Dennis Price’s antihero in the subversive 1949 Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, Man-su hatches a plan to take out the competition using his father’s gun, a macabre souvenir of the Korean War.
Park is no stranger to comedy, and it’s been a feature of his work forever, usually the grim, Hitchcockian kind, and there’s a hefty amount of that on display here. But there’s also a broader, sillier strain of humor that pops up every now and then — notably in Thirst and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance — and it’s on full display here. Actor Lee is in his element, but while Man-su’s abject desperation is truly pathetic at times (“I’m fighting a war for my family!” he protests), Lee always sells the emotion, and Son, as his loving but truly put-upon wife, really helps in that respect, especially when she rumbles him.
It loses some steam towards the end, indulging the trend for multiple endings that Korean cinema has never quite gotten over, and it isn’t quite as satisfying as his majestic, perverse 2022 thriller Decision to Leave (which was inexplicably snubbed by the Academy that year). It is, however, fantastic fun, an endlessly surprising ensemble piece that’s best approached cold.
Title: No Other Choice
Festival: Venice (Competition)
Director: Park Chan-wook
Screenwriters: Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, Jahye Lee
Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won
Sales: CJ ENM
Running time: 2 hrs 19 mins