by usia review

This time, the focus is on the working world and the severe changes taking place that are tearing apart the social fabric around us

The celebrated South Korean director Park Chan-wook, responsible for the controversial and violent “Oldboy” (released in 2003), returns with yet another brutal and violent autopsy of modern society in “No Other Choice”, widely applauded at the Venice Film Festival last August.

This time, the focus is on the working world and the severe changes taking place that are tearing apart the social fabric around us. Yoo Man-su (played by the ever-reliable Lee Byung-hun) is having a barbecue with his wife and two children — a teenage stepson from his wife’s previous relationship and a young prodigy daughter who constantly practices the cello. It is the portrait of a perfect family, the ideal of happiness for a comfortably well-off bourgeois household. This sense of fulfillment moves him to gather his family into a group hug and offer a prayer of thanks to the heavens for the good fortune he has enjoyed in life.

This happiness does not last. Yoo Man-su is made redundant from the paper company where he has worked for decades, after it is acquired by new American owners. Despite his long and dedicated service, he is dismissed. Months go by, and Man-su is unable to find work in the paper industry, the field he longs to return to. The family is forced to cut expenses — his wife must give up her tennis lessons, they have to give away their dogs because they can no longer afford to keep them, and, unable to pay the mortgage on their large home, they are forced to put it up for sale and move into a more modest apartment.

After several failed job interviews, in which Man-su proves too nervous to be selected, he begins to devise a diabolical plan: to murder his competitors one by one. “I had no other choice,” he says in his defense, attempting to justify his actions. Before he succeeds in killing everyone he intends to, Man-su faces numerous mishaps, and even his first victim proves difficult to eliminate — the murder ultimately being completed by someone else.

To reveal more of the plot would spoil the film’s many brilliant and hilarious surprises. This outstanding work is influenced by the dark humor of British Ealing comedies such as “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, as well as by the provocative wit found in some of the finest 1950s films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The film deserves to be seen not only for its dark humor, but also for its critique of contemporary society and the rampant capitalism embedded in corporate culture, which forces workers into constant competition for the very few positions that remain. Even though, by the end of the film, Yoo Man-su secures the long-desired job, we quickly realize it is a hollow victory, as he finds himself surrounded by robots. We are left with the sense that, in the near future, the true winner will be artificial intelligence.

Ricardo Martins 

Ricardo Martins has always been deeply interested, from a very young age, in Cinema and what it can offer as a space for both pleasure and constant learning.

In terms of film analysis, he does not follow an auteurist approach; instead, he explores cinema through themes and cinephile correlations, always seeking to analyze a film purely as an object in itself and without preconceived notions.