Staying employed these days is no guarantee. You have to be resourceful, even clever, to make ends meet and maintain whatever lifestyle you’re used to. Sometimes you have to take drastic measures, like posting a fake job opening to collect resumes to determine who your top competition is–and then hatching a plan to murder them and hide their bodies so you’re the only choice in town.
In No Other Choice, the entertaining, unpredictable, if overhyped comedy-thriller from Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), Lee Byung-hun (“Squid Game”) plays Man-su, a successful paper company manager who loses his job due to cost-cutting measures and desperately seeks new work. Man-su hatches the perfect plan, but with imperfect execution. The plan does not involve applying to Dunder Mifflin.
Sharply satirical and subtly absurdist, No Other Choice is visually unassuming and written with seeming abandon, though beneath the surface simmers an intentional takedown of modern corporatism and the rise of AI.
The crime sequences, without giving away too much, are well-staged and utterly unpredictable; Park approaches each as if Man-su has no idea what he’s doing, which is absolutely true. You never really know whether Man-su is going to go through with it, or even be capable of pulling it off; No Other Choice could go sideways at any given moment.
For that reason, it’s downright fun.
Yet, at nearly two-and-a-half hours long, No Other Choice feels as if there were many choices to edit this thing down by 30 minutes. It’s long for the material, never boring but lacking the tightness that could have turned this movie into a lean and ruthlessly funny crime comedy. As is, it meanders and loses focus, never going on tangents but missing opportunities to get to the point quicker and with more precision.
No Other Choice is an entertaining and unpredictable experience that’s worth seeing, but its sense of humor and filmmaking approach isn’t for everyone. Then again, neither is employment thanks to the joyous wonders of artificial intelligence.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.