South Korean director Park Chan-wook's adaptation of Donald Westlake’s novel "The Ax" is an exhilarating jet-black comedy which masterfully skewers the horrors the capitalism. It's a flat-out masterpiece.
The job market can be murder and looking for work is often a cutthroat affair. Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director of Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Decision To Leave, takes that very literally.
Based on Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel “The Ax”, No Other Choice is a satirical dark comedy which feels a bit too timely for comfort. It follows how family man and successful paper industry expert Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is made redundant after 25 years of good and loyal service, courtesy of an American buy-out and a series of budget cuts based on how AI will apparently solve all our problems.
Despite telling his wife Miri (Son Ye-jin) that a new job is around the corner, the next 13 months only bring low-paying temp jobs and the realisation that he can longer maintain the lifestyle his family have become accustomed to. His desperation grows when his loving relationship with Miri is threatened and the family let go of their two (very charismatic) golden retrievers.
Fully grasping he's trapped in an ultra-competitive hellscape, Man-su knows that if he wants to be top pick for the next big job at another paper company, he’s going to have to eliminate the competition. Not through a CV spruce or cozying up to the right people; he decides to put out a fake advert in an industry newspaper, go through the candidates that apply, and proceed to kill off the other applicants.
Reduce them to pulp, if you will.
Clumsily. Creatively. Often hilariously. Always bloodily.
Considering the Oscar nominations are out, one question springs to mind: How was No Other Choice snubbed for Best International Feature? It's inexplicable, as this is a contender for Director Park’s masterpiece. It’s certainly his funniest film to date.
Comparisons to Bong Joon-ho's Parasite are inevitable, as both films share a scathing tone when it comes to skewering capitalism and class systems. However, _No Other Choice ’_s tonal shifts make it stand out as a successor to Parasite: its violent twists and unexpected turns are masterfully handled, leaving the audience unsure whether they should be laughing, squirming, or booking an appointment with their therapist.
Central to this is Park’s use of slapstick comedy, as some of the murders have a Coen Brothers feel to them and are truly laugh-out-loud funny. One scene involving a home invasion, a cranked-up sound system and far too many oven gloves is an ingenious and farcical treat.
Then there’s Lee Byung-hun's central (and anarchically physical) performance. The actor makes his antihero compelling yet slyly sinister, managing to toe the same tonal tightrope as his director when it comes to toying with audience sympathy. His fall from grace is cathartic considering his initial sense of entitlement, but he’s a man whose self-worth is so defined by his place in an unforgiving system that his dehumanisation makes you root for him. He’s also so inept as a murderer that you can’t help but cheer him on when he gets it right. Park and Lee manage to make Man-su both relatable as a cypher for those crushed by the system that perversely legitimises ‘desperate times mean desperate measures’ and a self-serving individual who could have avoided becoming an emasculated serial killer had he asked his wife for help.
To say any more would be to diminish the bleak blast, which gets increasingly unhinged and incendiary as it progresses. However, it is worth singling out Son Ye-jin's scene-stealing performance and Kim Woo-hyung's exhilarating cinematography, with wild camera movements creating a dynamism that will make the 139-minute runtime fly by.
Consistently surprising and thrillingly merciless, No Other Choice works its way to a wickedly bleak finale, a scene which recalls Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and reminds us that Pyrrhic victories are the best we can hope for in terms of “happy endings” when it’s capitalism for capitalism’s sake. We’re all increasingly underappreciated cogs in a soulless machine, one in which employers fail to protect workers, and which reduces individuals to cruelty in the name of self-preservation.
The solution? Hard to say, as the system will continue its degrading churn, only nourished by those who forgo empathy in the name of technical ‘advances’ and profit margins. But if Chaplin was right when he said that we “must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature or go insane”, we may as well opt for the first option. Even in the face of adversity and in the darkest of places, laughter is the relief - a temporary suspension of pain that also allows us to better consider what filmmakers like Director Park are exposing. We still have that choice.
No Other Choice is out in cinemas now.
