## Film Review: "No Other Choice" - A Sensational State-of-the-Nation Satire by Park Chan-wook This review from **The Guardian**, authored by **Peter Bradshaw**, discusses the new film by Korean director **Park Chan-wook**, titled **"No Other Choice"**. The film, released on **August 29, 2025**, is based on Donald E. Westlake's 1997 satirical horror-thriller "The Ax" and is dedicated to Costa-Gavras, who previously filmed it in 2005. ### Key Findings and Conclusions: * **A Masterful Blend of Genres:** The film begins as an "Ealing comedy-type caper" but evolves into a complex portrait of family dysfunction, fragile masculinity, the breadwinner crisis, and the state of the nation. * **Critique of Modern Society:** The narrative explores themes of mechanization, the dominance of algorithms, the devaluation of human importance, and the farcical irrelevance of human intentions and agency. * **Park Chan-wook's Signature Style:** The film exhibits the director's "effortlessly fluent, steely confidence" and a storytelling momentum that accommodates digressions, set-pieces, and "trance-like submission to mysterious visions." * **Critical Acclaim:** While potentially not Park's masterpiece, the reviewer deems it "the best film in the Venice competition so far." ### Plot Summary and Character Analysis: The story centers on **You Man-su** (played by Korean star **Lee Byung-hun**), a man who loses his job at a paper factory due to brutal redundancies implemented by new American owners. Despite being devastated, Man-su lacks the emotional language to process his loss. His primary motivation becomes reclaiming his manhood by securing a new job in the paper industry within three months, before his severance pay runs out. Facing impossible odds, Man-su devises a cunning plan: 1. **Phoney Recruitment Ad:** He places a fake advertisement in a paper industry trade magazine. 2. **No Online Applications:** To create a digital paper trail for his intended crime, he insists on paper applications submitted via post. 3. **Murderous Intent:** He plans to murder all applicants, using their personal information to create job vacancies for those employed and reduce competition for the unemployed. Man-su's desperate situation is highlighted by his stubborn refusal to consider employment outside the paper industry, echoing his bosses' justification for layoffs: "no other choice." This leads him to a path of "mass murder." ### Narrative Digressions and Subplots: The film deviates from a straightforward serial-killer narrative, with Man-su stalling early on. Other priorities emerge: * **Family Home and Trauma:** The house Man-su is in danger of losing due to mortgage default is revealed to be his childhood home, site of a profound trauma connected to his pig farmer father. This is underscored by a disturbing image of a victim trussed up like a pig. * **Family Disarray:** Subplots of family dysfunction are given significant weight: * Man-su's wife, **Miri** (played by **Son Ye-jin**), takes a job as a hygienist, assisting a dentist whom Man-su suspects of having designs on her. This triggers a psychosomatic toothache in Man-su, which he refuses to have treated. * Man-su's son is accused of stealing mobile phones from a neighbor's store. * The son also witnesses his father engaging in strange behavior in the greenhouse, which becomes the setting for a "sensationally weird dream sequence." ### Tone and Overall Meaning: Throughout the film, a "deadpan note of knockabout black comedy" is consistently present. The review suggests that the film's final "extraordinary images of hi-tech paper production and eco-devastation" offer a potential interpretation, pointing towards the overwhelming forces of mechanization and algorithmic control that render human agency and intentions increasingly irrelevant. ### News Metadata: * **News Title/Type:** Film Review * **Report Provider/Author:** The Guardian / Peter Bradshaw * **Date/Time Period Covered:** Published August 29, 2025. The review discusses events and themes relevant to contemporary society. * **Relevant News Identifiers:** * **URL:** `https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/29/no-other-choice-review-park-chan-wook` * **Title:** "No Other Choice review – sensational state-of-the-nation satire from Park Chan-wook" * **Excerpt:** "An unemployed paper worker hatches a cunning plan to murder his way back into the job market in this continually surprising black comedy from the director of The Handmaiden and Oldboy" * **Publisher:** The Guardian * **Topic:** Entertainment * **SubTopic:** Movies * **Language:** English * **Paywall:** False
No Other Choice review – sensational state-of-the-nation satire from Park Chan-wook
Read original at The Guardian →Korean director Park Chan-wook’s new film brings his usual effortlessly fluent, steely confidence and a type of storytelling momentum that can accommodate all kinds of digressions, set-pieces and the occasional trance-like submission to mysterious visions. It starts out like an Ealing comedy-type caper then somehow morphs into something else: a portrait of family dysfunction, fragile masculinity and the breadwinner crisis, and the state of the nation itself.
It is based on Donald E Westlake’s satirical horror-thriller The Ax from 1997, previously filmed in 2005 by Costa-Gavras, to whom this film is dedicated. It may not be Park’s masterpiece but it is the best film in the Venice competition so far.The scene is a perfect family home, where the man of the house, You Man-su (played by Korean star Lee Byung-hun), is benignly presiding over a late-summer barbecue in the garden, grilling some eels that have been given to him by the new American owners of the paper factory where he is employed.
Adoringly looking on are his wife Miri (Son Ye-jin), her teen son from a previous marriage, their daughter (a cello prodigy), and their two lovely Labradors. But those eels are in fact a heartless and misjudged part of a job payoff; the new US masters are driving through brutal redundancies and Man-su is among them.
He is devastated, but without the emotional language to express or understand how profound this loss is to him. He is fanatically desperate to reclaim his manhood in the eyes of his wife, children and pets by getting a new job in the paper industry within the three months before his severance pay runs out.
But that is impossible, so a brilliant idea occurs to him. He sets up a phoney recruitment ad in a paper industry trade magazine, and with inspired cunning, Man-su makes it clear that, as the head of a paper firm committed to the product, he will on principle accept no online applications; they have to be on paper via the post, thus leaving no digital trail for the crime he intends to carry out.
Using the personal information that these trusting applicants will send him, he will murder them all, thus creating a string of job vacancies in the cases of applicants who are in work, and, in the cases of the unemployed, a reduction in the amount of competition.When asked if he might try employment outside the paper industry, Man-su stubbornly says he has “no other choice”, while the American bosses say they had “no other choice” but to bring down the wage bill.
Now he has “no other choice” but mass murder.At first, this film looks like a serial-killer comedy in the style of Kind Hearts and Coronets, or a salaryman-shame nightmare in the vein of Laurent Cantet’s Time Out and Nicole Garcia’s The Adversary. But in fact Park refuses our expectations: Man-su does not work through his victim-base as we might imagine.
In fact, he stalls early on. Other narrative priorities come to the surface. We discover that the house, which he is in danger of losing due to mortgage default, was his childhood home, and the site of a profound trauma connected to his father, a pig farmer. (One of his victims gets trussed up as compactly as a pig: an unforgettably nasty image.
) So all this might be only tangentially connected to his sacking.There are also subplots of family disarray, which loom out of the screen quite as importantly as the bizarre homicide campaign. Miri gets a job as a hygienist, assisting a dentist whom Man-su suspects has designs on her, and he instantly gets a psychosomatic toothache, which he naturally refuses to get treated; the thought of his wife’s suspected lover, assisted by his wife, bending over his open mouth is unthinkable.
Then his son is accused of stealing mobile phones from a store owned by an obnoxious neighbour; and the son also witnesses his dad doing something strange in the greenhouse, which is to be the site of a sensationally weird dream sequence whose pure inexplicability seeps into the rest of the film.And throughout it all, a deadpan note of knockabout black comedy is never entirely absent.
What on earth does it all mean? Some final, extraordinary images of hi-tech paper production and eco-devastation perhaps gesture at a meaning: mechanisation is coming, the algorithm is king, people are less important and our human intentions and human agency are descending into farcical irrelevance.
