No Other Choice

When the job market is ruthless, you have to eliminate the competition. The protagonist of No Other Choice — the new film by Park Chan-wook, the director of Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave – literally takes matters into his own hands. The Korean master of genre cinema offers a disturbingly accurate diagnosis of contemporary fears – in his uncompromising, signature style.

Man-su (star of Squid Game, Lee Byung-Hun) leads a perfect life: a stable job, a family, a home, two golden retrievers. But it takes just one day for this idyll to turn into a horror story. Man-su loses his job at the paper factory, and with it his status, masculinity, identity, honor, and purpose in life. To get them back, he’ll stop at nothing—especially since dirty work brings just as much satisfaction as the desk job.

 

While mercilessly mocking the rat race, corporate mentality, and the male ego, the director also weighs in on the contemporary job market in the age of AI. No Way Out, much like the cult classic Parasite, hides insightful observations about class tensions and turbulent social changes beneath layers of dark humor. Half-jokingly, half-seriously, Park Chan-wook poses a provocative question to us: is there a job worth killing for?