Park channels detestation, deception and anxiety into this slick and entertaining, if somewhat protracted, black comedy about a family man who loses his cushy job and thus must devise a nefarious plan to eliminate his competition to get the new job he so desires.

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We all detest job interviews, trying to impress someone, often deceptively, in the interest of appearing employable.  I haven’t gone for a face-to-face one for a long time, probably since 2012, when I had to apply for a compulsory internship as part of graduation requirements.  I remembered it to be an anxiety-laden affair. 

Park Chan-wook channels all of these—detestation, deception and anxiety—into a work about an upper-middle-class family man who loses his cushy job at a paper company, and must do whatever it takes to get back that level of monthly salary again, thus giving new meaning to the words ‘paper cut’. 

Well, paper cuts, if left untreated, can still lead to some form of bleeding. 

It’s an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 horror-thriller novel, ‘The Ax’, which was previously adapted by Costa-Gavras in 2005 with the same title (hence Park’s tribute to the 92-year-old Greek master in the end credits). 

Here, the title ‘No Other Choice’ suggests less of the dark brutalism associated with medieval weaponry, but more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders—that what must be done will be done. 

“Did the interview go well?”

Lee Byung-hun is outstanding as the competition-eliminating breadwinner in question, a quarter century since he starred in Park’s international breakthrough, Joint Security Area (2000).  Son Ye-jin is even better as his wife, who suspects something but can’t pinpoint exactly what. 

Cloaked in a mystery in which the audience may be one step ahead in terms of knowledge but can still be caught by surprises, No Other Choice is plotted, shot and edited to the precision of a veteran watchmaker. 

Some might find it too elegantly constructed or protracted in its storytelling, not an uncommon criticism of the director’s post-Stoker movies like The Handmaiden (2014) and Decision to Leave (2022), both I found myself enjoying more.  As compared to, say, his early 2000s ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, his later films feel more like playing Sudoku than Jenga. 

Still, No Other Choice remains entertaining, slick, and at times, wildly creative with film language, as the Korean auteur gives us a high-intensity black comedy, where we can find hilarity in violence, and the violence in irony. 

Grade: B+

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