No Other Choice

General spoiler warning for the entire review

I need to see more of Korean director Park Chan-wook's films. In addition to his latest, No Other Choice, I've only seen three other films by him: The Handmaiden, Oldboy, and the English-language film Stoker. Although I don't always jibe with his films, they never bore me and they're always visually stunning.

No Other Choice is no different in that regard. The film follows the increasingly desperate measures taken by You Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) after he is laid off of his job at a paper factory. A husband and father of two human children and two dogs, Man-su is frantic to find work so that he doesn't have to sell his home, give his dogs to his in-laws, and end cello lessons for his musical prodigy daughter. But competition is so fierce in the paper industry! What's a hard-working man to do?

Perhaps...eliminate...the competition? 

Going into this film, I was expecting it to be very different than the film I watched. I assumed it would be "guy goes on killing spree to kill off his competitors"...and it isn't that, exactly. There's a LOT more going on in No Other Choice than I was prepared for. The thing is, Man-su isn't a natural born killer. He's more of a lover than a fighter, if the many references his wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), makes about their sex life. And when he starts researching the men who would be his biggest competitors (other guys laid of by paper companies), he realizes that they, rather inconveniently, are humans with good qualities, making it hard to kill them in cold blood.

I think my biggest complaint about this film is that it feels very scattered and chaotic at times. The pacing feels very weird--spending a lot of time on one particular plot point and then rushing through others. We follow one target of Man-su's, a guy named Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min), for like 40 minutes of the movie and another target for about 10 minutes. And Man-su goes from very reluctant killer to not-so-reluctant killer to kind-of-enjoys-it killer so quickly that it doesn't feel realistic or earned. The tone is wildly all over the place, veering from feel-good to sadistic and back again. That worked in the movie's favor sometimes and other times just felt like whiplash. 

Essentially, the film plays like Park had a ton of ideas and gags and satirical barbs that he wanted to cram into the film...and the ideas and gags and satirical barbs are all great--but it's just so much for one film. Imagine a gifted writer without an editor. 

Despite that pretty significant setback, No Other Choice is still an absolute hoot. The film employs a lot of physical comedy in addition to satire and pitch-black humor. There were some scenes that wouldn't have been out of place in The Three Stooges, such as when three characters wrestle for a gun in the most awkward configurations possible.

No Other Choice is definitely worth checking out. It's not my favorite Park Chan-wook film (that would be The Handmaiden), but even a mid film by Park is still heads and tails more interesting and well-made than many other films. 

Grade: A-