Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice” feels like some damned herald of poor tidings in our very near future, a plague-ridden horseman dismounting momentarily to entertain us with the mechanism of our own self-destruction. A scathing, eviscerating, and often quite funny chronicling of a recently laid-off paper manufacturing specialist as he is driven to murder in an effort to attain a new job that will sustain his family’s plush lifestyle, “No Other Choice” shares more than a bit of DNA with 2020’s Best Picture winner, Bong Joon Ho’s sublime “Parasite”, also a film about how capitalism’s scourge dismembers indiscriminantly. While that film threw a blistering, warped spotlight on the alien nature of wealth disparity and one family’s attempts to upend a system rigged against them, in his latest, Park Chan-wook, the director of “Old Boy”, fixes his lens upon the overt cruelty inherent to corporate cost-cutting measures, the chronic flaccidity of moral standards in a modern world, and how the rat race of free enterprise has turned us each, to a person, into cannibals willing, nay eager, to rip each other’s throats out for the chance to lick the boots of conglomerates and their largely American overlords. Oh, this is an American story, let’s not get it twisted, just as much as it is a Korean one. But the original sin was born and suckled here in the U.S.of A, the pestilence that corrupted the entire world from the first time a child buried their face in a smallpox blanket, the first time a mining company fired shots into a band of peaceful unionizers, or the first time a mindless AI widget did the work that used to sustain the lifeblood of an entire family. “No Other Choice” is a legacy of unrepentant greed made manifest through one man’s murderous last resort, a bracing screed that seems to know that while there is certainly no ethical consumption under capitalism, perhaps neither is there ethical perpetuation.
In the film, based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel THE AX, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is initially a proud and happy man. He has a job making industrial paper that feels more like a religious calling than a profession. That job has helped fund the purchase of his generational family home, where his wife (Son Ye-jin), two children, and a pair of slobbering golden retrievers live in secluded bliss. The opening scene of the film shows Man-su grilling eel gifted by his paper company in recognition of his years of service, and basking in having achieved everything he could have hoped for in life. He worked hard, made the right choices, and everything turned out for the best; that old exceptionalism snake oil we were all sold at one time or another. Then, as tends to happen, his company is purchased by an American conglomerate, and he is told to fire most of his workers in favor of a fully automated factory line. Furious, Man-su protests, and he is summarily fired as well. Left listless, attending mental health seminars for the recently let-go, full of empty solipsisms and self-aggrandizement mantras, Man-su faces the prospect of losing everything in which he prided himself: his home and beloved greenhouse, his daughter’s prospect of becoming a cello virtuoso, his wife’s ability to enjoy her leisure time, and even the two dogs, which have to be shipped upstate to save costs. Thirteen months of slowly bled savings later, he is offered a chance at redemption: a job interview at a new paper company, Moon Paper. His hopes are dashed, however, when he is humiliated, mid-interview, by a smarmy manager. At first, Man-su considers murdering the manager by dropping a flower pot on his head, perhaps opening up a slot in the corporate hierarchy for himself to fill. But of course, he realizes, that won’t do. There would be other applicants, other, more qualified men who would snatch any job he created via vindictive homicide. Only, what if those men were no longer around, either, and Man-su was the last candidate standing? Now left with no good options, what other choice does he have?
The slow creep of unemployment stretching on into seeming infinity might be the pinnacle of evil’s banality. Is there a feeling so hopeless as sending application after application online without any response, of those hours spent adjusting resumes and cover letters, scrutinizing over each detail as if that one thing will be the difference between success and destitution? The pandemic ossified this experience in 2020, and the AI devolution is doing the same now as we watch profession after profession become commodified, condensed, and bastardized beyond any human recognition. The way the paper men of “No Other Choice” feel about their work is near monastic; they are zealots who live for the feeling of hitting a car-sized roll of white with a specialized wooden stick to test its constitution. The paper is pure, the paper is honest, and necessary. These men feel they are part of an ecosystem, taking what they need from the Earth and replanting it to make something new, something bigger than themselves. When that calling is ripped away from Man-su, it forces him to, instead of pivoting or accepting his fate, rage against his circumstance by destroying the lives of men who suffer the very same affliction. There but for the grace of God, and all that. Part of Man-su’s plan to expose his competition is to put out a job listing for a fake company, seeking the best applicants who might be a threat. His first victim, a former paper man fallen into drunken depression, is a pitiful, buffoonish creature sleepwalking through his days, while his wife actively cheats when he is away attending grief counseling. But then he sees Man-su’s fake listing, and suddenly he becomes empowered, driven, and eager to regain the sense of self he lost. It’s tragic, and while undoubtedly comedic and outlandish, immeasurably sad. There is a familiar melancholy behind this man’s downward spiral, which Chan-wook takes care to present as amusing, but inherently human. In contrast, with each step in Man-su’s plan, we are complicit in his own diminishing humanity as he becomes less a man than an agent of the system, a brutal corporate killer without remorse. What value is the world if you sell your soul to attain it? “No Other Choice” posits, accurately, that value to be a home in the suburbs with two kids and dogs; the optics of comfort, if not the real thing, while corrosion spreads along the inner linings of one’s heart. How’s that for severance?
In some cursed universe that is hopefully not our own, “No Other Choice” might one day be remade as a broad studio comedy about one American man’s bumbling antics as he kills his way to regaining his corporate job. Perhaps Paul Rudd would play the hapless manager at a widget factory, fired for being too pro-worker, who must resort to murder to reclaim his piece of the American dream. In truth, Ryan Reynolds would probably play one of the victims, and what a fun time at the movies that would be. Thankfully, Park Chan-wook knows better than to run from the darkness at the core of black comedy. “No Other Choice” sees this existential rot for what it is, a chronic cancerous bile spreading unimpeded. An early scene shows Man-su watching, despondent, as a lush pear tree is eaten apart by ladybugs; a beautiful, natural thing slowly picked to pieces by an invasive species. There is something equally beautiful in a person who feels fulfilled and useful, making something that matters and being paid an honest wage for it. But was that ever reality? Perhaps that was merely our collective fever dream that long ago everything was fair and equitable; that people were not exploited and broken on the wheel of global trade interests. When the world is run by AI bots farming dividends and not warm-blooded people with hearts where their stock options should be, is there room for beauty at all? As was the case in 2020, when another totemic Korean filmmaker loudly proclaimed the sky to be falling, we would be wise to heed the tea leaves and batten down the hatches, as this new plague is spreading and, if left unchecked, will assuredly consume most of us. At least everyone left behind can enjoy their status managing the machines, whistling alone in soulless warehouses where paper is made, not by proud men, but by cold, unfeeling steel.
Park Chan-wook is a master, and “No Other Choice” is indeed masterful; as coherent and revolutionary a piece of filmmaking as I have seen in a good while, entertaining and powerful in equal measure. His final image, of an automated machine unceremoniously skinning trees in a forest, is unambiguous and lasting; the byproduct of lax ethics and the selfish self-consumption of corporations that have chosen to forget that humans owe a debt to the world we inherit. We’ll cost-cut our way to oblivion, Chan-wook seems to be saying, and soon it won’t just be the trees being ripped from their roots but our futures as well. If only we had another choice, perhaps things would be different.
Choose wisely.
You’ll be glad you did.
“No Other Choice” is playing at The Broad Theater.
