Feeling humiliated (at being out of work, heading in to mortgage arrears, and his wife (Mi-ri played by Son Ye-jin) needing to go back to work), Man-su’s desperation leads to him taking ever darker and more violent action to eliminate potential competitors from a job he’s chasing.
This dark satire celebrates the weirdness of job interviews, the virtuosity of his neurodivergent cello-playing daughter, the ineptness of police detectives, and tripping people up on their own bad karma. Two dogs and an endless sequence of well-sculpted scenes will surely make this another classic example of Korean cinema.
The send-up of capitalism easily sustains its tenor over 139 minutes with the satisfying but unpredictable dispatch of colleagues in the paper industry. By the end, we’re aware that while Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been depleting the available workforce, mechanisation and robotics are less dramatically human head count required to do the work he once so ably managed.
No Other Choice will be screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 23 January.
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