'No Other Choice' review: Park Chan-wook's anti-capitalist parable skewers the job market

'No Other Choice' review: Park Chan-wook's anti-capitalist parable skewers the job market Shannon Connellan Creel House . A Tomatometer-approved critic , Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror . Read Full Bio If you took a shot for every corporate euphemism in No Other Choice , you'd be circling back, going in a different direction, finding your services no longer required, rightsized, downsized, and as plastered as one of the characters. The very title itself evades responsibility, a phrase used by big companies to hide behind intentional, cold decision-making. In this superb dark comedy-thriller, legendary South Korean director Park Chan-wook delivers a biting social commentary on the brutal job market and its associated hyper-competitiveness that sees candidates out for blood, literally. 'No Other Choice' trailer: Park Chan-wook's latest is a black comedy about capitalism and murder Based on Donald E. Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax and written by Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee, and Don McKellar, the film presents an anti-capitalist fable about workplace politics, where merciless company restructuring drives a desperate family man ( Squid Game 's Lee Byung-hun) to violence - despite his lack of skills in that department. While not as ultraviolent as Park's lauded Vengeance Trilogy or as seductive as his recent Hitchockian film , the director hypothesises the fallout of corporate redundancies through this bumbling self-made assassin - one whose inept, maddening decisions will make you consider the morality of it all. Decision to Leave Under pressure to provide, is murdering his way into a job the only option in this economy ? No Other Choice sees a family man scorned in a hyper-competitive, capitalist reality. In an unhinged, uncomfortably empathetic performance by Lee, the nucleus of the film is Yoo Man-soo, a hardworking, proud, and long-serving employee at specialist paper company Solar Paper. He's saved enough to buy his father's stunning house and provide his wife Mi-ri ( Crash Landing on You 's Son Ye-jin) and two kids a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, full of cello lessons, outdoor barbecues, and designer goods. It's all captured in a saturated golden light and dynamic cinematography from Kim Woo-hyung - with whom Park worked on The Little Drummer Girl series. But when Man-soo is suddenly fired after decades of company loyalty, bills stack up and pragmatic Mi-ri declares their need to adjust - and it's not just creature comforts that are sent packing but actual creatures too, including their pair of adorable, obedient golden retrievers. No corporate mindfulness workshop could assuage Man-soo's fears of eternal unemployment and the societal shame of it all. Meanwhile, Mi-ri gets her own job at a dentist's office, where the handsomeness of her new boss fuels Man-soo's jealousy and determination to reclaim his breadwinning pride. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Suddenly, the perfect opportunity (or any opportunity at all) appears on the horizon at the rival Moon Paper, with Man-soo facing an intimidating ocean of potential candidates and AI-powered replacements. Not seeing a snowball's chance in...

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