Park Chanwook, “No Other Choice” (2025)
Behind a convoluted plot in which a paper industry expert, unceremoniously retrenched after 25 years of giving his all to his employer, resorts to killing off other unemployed paper industry managers in order to claim an opening at a rival paper company, lies a chilling and morally dark message of how late-stage global capitalism, in its 21st-century phase, not only disposes of people like so much detritus but also moulds the psychologies of its victims so that they too, turn on one another like brutes – because, in their own minds, and having identified so completely with their roles as worker bees, they have “no other choice”. Mansu (Lee Byunghun) is an award-winning middle manager of paper maker Solar Paper, happily married to devoted wife Miri (Son Yejin) and bringing up two children in their large rambling home – at least until Solar Paper is bought out by an American company whose senior managers then promptly retrench several employees including Mansu himself. Devastated, Mansu promises Miri that he’ll get another papermaking job within three months. A year then passes and we find Mansu working a dead-end, low-paying job in a retail warehouse after many months of unsuccessful applications to various papermaking companies. During that time, Mansu’s family has had to cut back on its lifestyle, including giving up two pet dogs and Miri taking up part-time work. However, the family is unable to keep up with maintaining mortgage payments on the house.
After being humiliated by Seonchul at Moon Paper, a company he is trying to join, Mansu attempts to kill him with a pot plant but has to abandon the idea. Mansu then buys the plant and uses it as an inspiration to create a fake job advertisement to identify other people likely to apply for the same position at Moon Paper. Examining the various applications, Mansu identifies two candidates, Gu Bummo (Lee Sungmin) and Go Sijo (Cha Seungwon), whose qualifications exceed his own and sets out to kill them and Seonchul. From this point on, the film revolves around Mansu’s arduous – and often hilarious – attempts to kill them and dispose of their bodies so that detectives, who eventually turn up to investigate the disappearances of Gu and Go and to warn Mansu, do not suspect him.
Proceeding like a morality play, this black satire follows Mansu’s gradual descent into serial murder and his inner struggle as, out of desperation to save and maintain everything (his family, his house and its history) dear to him, he is driven to commit extreme acts that become increasingly grotesque and torturous. His wife and their son are also pushed by their changed economic circumstances on their own downward slides: the son steals mobile phones from a store owned by his friend’s father, and Miri is prepared to offer sex to the father as part of a blackmail attempt to get the friend to confess to being the main culprit after both teenagers are arrested by police. The son later witnesses Mansu trying to get rid of Go Sijo’s body and tells Miri who, on checking the evidence herself, lies to the boy to protect him and to stave off the possible break-up of their family if the truth were to be revealed publicly. Only the young daughter, neurodivergent and obsessed with her cello playing, ironically remains as the film’s centre of moral calm.
The film is deliberately slow to allow its various characters to reveal their motivations and obsessions for doing what they do, and to garner audience sympathy for Mansu as he continues falling deeper into a moral black hole that he will never escape. Parts of the plot – especially the murder attempt on Gu Bummo which involves the latter’s unfaithful wife Ara, an unsuccessful actress – can seem drawn-out and excessive, if comical, but these sections serve to underline Mansu’s own moral dilemmas which translate into emotional struggles and jealousies involving his wife, and even physical struggles such as his snakebite and his toothaches. As Mansu, Lee Byunghun delivers a stunning performance that will probably define his career, and the other actors are as committed to their roles as he is. The role of Go Sijo, small as it is, is perhaps the most heartbreaking: like Mansu, Sijo has a daughter to bring up and is trying his best working in a shoe store in a job beneath (and ill-suited) to his abilities – yet his efforts and background count for little as Mansu disposes of him in a manner that clearly shows contract killing will never be his (Mansu’s, that is) forte.
Mention should be made of the role that the natural world, and vegetation in particular, plays, in inspiring Mansu on his murderous path and shielding him from having to answer for his crimes. For what the plants do to aid Mansu, they get short shrift from him, just as his old employer repays him for his loyalty by rejecting him: when he is not thinking about paper and papermaking, he finds enjoyment in gardening and manipulating (and controlling) nature through bonsai. Unusual camera angles and the creative use of panning, although often contrived, emphasise the contrasts between the natural world and the world which Mansu identifies with and strives to be part of – even though that identity and its connections are entirely man-made and apt to disappear very quickly, as Mansu discovers when he is sacked.
After the plot is complete – some viewers may find it comes across as a series of sketches, most of them darkly comic, and often gruesome – the film’s climax may be the most chilling part: Mansu gets what he wants and celebrates his good fortune – but he celebrates his victory in a factory completely controlled by AI and robotics. Having fought his way to the top in a competition he has created, and which is bound by his rules, he has become almost as dehumanised as the machines that previously replaced him and his fellow workers.