No Other Choice is a Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook who is a director that I am relatively new to. The film follows Man-su who is working at a papermaking company and is laid off and tries to get a job. Man-su is a nice guy but is but he is made redundant by the new American owners and after over a year trying to get a new job, Man-su de goes for a job and after getting humiliated during the interview decides to try and kill the manager but decides against it when he realises that he needs to make sure he is the best candidate to replace him so he fakes a job application and works on the people who are better qualified than him and goes about killing them.
The film ends with Man-su in his new job, his family home saved with the dogs back home and he is celebrating having his job whereas at the beginning of the film he wanted to stand up for his fellow workers so it is survival of the fittest really in the world of employment when you have a family to feed. The main characters were good. Lee Byung-hun was very good as Man-su. Even when he is trying to kill people so he gets his job, he still comes across as a likeable person and you want him just to catch a break so he helps support his family in the way that most people would want to. Son Ye-jin plays his wife (Lee Mi-ri) and even though she seems exasperated with her husband's lack of employment she seems like she is willing to support. The children are a mixed bag. The son is fairly bland and doesn't really come into anything substantial when he is arrested. For most of the film the daughter is the stronger child because there seems to be something that stands out about her and she just appears to be doodling random nothing until the end when it looks like music notes that she is playing.
There were a couple of occasions where the audience were laughing. Fart sounds will always get a chuckle (immature I know but still funny) and the humour doesn't seem out of place and this is a difficult thing to pull off. The film probably needed humour to break up the strangeness and the funniest part for me was when Man-su was running back to his car and there is a long shot where he is running towards the camera before changing direction to the car and a woman is chasing him a humorous distance. Don't know why I found it funny, I just did.
I wanted to like this more than I do. I think it's a fine film but I spent way too much time wondering what to make of it. I think the fact that the film managed to maintain my attention and I wasn't bored showed that the story and the characters were working on me. I would be happy to go back and watch this again because the seats in the screening that I was in for this film weren't very comfortable even though it was supposed to be a premier seat. I went to a different cinema to the one I usually go to and this was one where I saw all the films that meant something growing up like Jurassic Park, The Matrix and Toy Story. This screen was suited to this film but with an action film the result might be different. Anyway ‘No Other Choice’ is definitely worth your time.
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