By Matthew Moorcroft

Highest Recommendation

• Directed by Park Chan-wook
• Starring Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min
• Not Rated

Wired like the best built moustraps just waiting to ensnare you in it’s grasp, No Other Choice is maybe the most Park Chan-wook movie ever made in a long line of Park Chan-wook films. With every trademark here – brief bursts of gory violence, pitch black comedy, and impressively jaw-dropping match cuts – you would think on the surface this would be hinderance to No Other Choice as a picture. Not to say Chan-wook’s normal routine is rote, far from it, but like all filmmakers there is always the possibility that you rest on laurels rather then do something radically different and find a new perspective you may not have had otherwise.

But Chan-wook as a director is somebody who flourishes and shines when he is able to be let loose with his massive bag of tricks. Viewing the film medium as a playground more then anything else, you never know what to expect with his work and No Other Choice continues that trend beautifully, constantly finding the best new angle to shoot things from or the most unexpected, most interesting plotline to double down on. It keeps you guessing with the same feeling of a great work of improv, even if it’s as scripted and calculated as these can also get.

A gorgeously shot anti-capitalist fable, No Other Choice is a triumph. It’s yet another masterpiece from a director who seems to be unable to make anything other then masterpieces, fully confident in it’s tone and style to the point of nigh precision. Every frame of this feels like it was made in the mind of a madman who has been dreaming of these images for ages, beginning with an opening sequence that feels almost dreamlike in it’s purposefully saccharine tone. After all, Yoo Man-su has everything, and can’t lose it all just because one of decision, right?

But thus is the way of corporate overlords, and Man-su quickly finds himself without a plan and sooner without money to feed his wife and his two children (hilariously named Si-one and Ri-one to compliment their dogs, Si-Two and Ri-Two). But just like the namesake of the film, No Other Choice, he’s forced into a position where he literally has no other options left available for him. When your competition is gone, certainly they’ll go for you then, right?

What’s great about No Other Choice is that it mostly lets itself play out and avoids revealing the grand punchline until the final moments. That final punchline is one which feels achingly relevant and distressingly real at the same time, leaving you with a pit in your stomach as you quickly realize that whatever hope Man-su might have could be as short lived as the minds of his new overlords. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so uniformly tragic.

Up until that point though, No Other Choice stays as entertaining as the best thrillers, as funny as the best comedies, and as riveting as the best dramas thanks to that aforementioned command of the craft. A sequence involving a needle drop during an attempted assassination is of particular standout here, especially when it devolves into a cartoon like Three Stooges act of a bunch of idiots wrestling for a gun they otherwise don’t know how to use. The entire film has that spark of energy in it’s veins, with even the most mundane of shots and ideas transitioning or moving forward as exciting as possible. A flicker of a lighter has never looked as cool or as crazy as this does on screen.

So much of this is also anchored by a ridiculously up to form Lee Byung-hun, fresh off of Squid Game, whose mix of naivete, confidence, and doofusness ranges from endearing to infuriating depending on the sequence – something that Chan-wook does a lot of fun with. The entire cast is up to his level, thankfully, and he gives so much of them things to chew on as he uses this opportunity to explore the multiple ways unemployment changes people and can ruin relationships. Or, in some rare cases, make them stronger. What’s unique in that vein about No Other Choice is that it’s critique of the job market and general vibes of capitalism are one thing, it’s more laser focused on how the search for that “perfect job” is partly the reason why so many people end up crashing out or losing their way. Your perfect job might not even exist tomorrow the way things are going, sometimes it’s just best to take what you can get and surround yourself with people who care about you cause that’s ultimately what’s more important.

Is No Other Choice the best Park Chan-wook film? The fact we ask this question everytime a new film of his comes out I think is telling on that end, but No Other Choice is certainly up there and worthy of being in the discussion. It’s everything that I could have asked for once you told me about the idea of “corporate slasher by way of dark comedy by Park Chan-wook” and then some; the kind of movie we’ll be thinking of years down the road as one of the best of it’s respective decade. Another fantastic film from one of cinema’s current greats.