No Other Choice

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

[mr_rating_result]

The Korean auteur Park Chan-wook (“Decision To Leave”) directs “No Other Choice.” The dense thriller touches on many concepts, from social commentary to Surrealism laced with a pronounced Grand Guignol sensibility. While it is most definitely a thriller, it is multifaceted and knotty. It is hard to follow at times, but it is also poetic and precise with a rhythm all its own. Above all it is full of poetry and never misses a step.

Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is a veteran employee of paper company suddenly faced with losing his job. Throughout his day, he follows company officials and decides to get them out of the way so he can maintain his job and his standard of living, having a wife, two kids, golden retriever dogs, and a spacious house.

Wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) is giving up tennis and her career to save the family, in addition to selling the house.

Man-su stalks the higher-ups of the paper company and ponders killing them. He makes a gun but not before taking his father‘s pistol from the Vietnam war. Man-su is bullied and humiliated by manager Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon) in a bathroom stall.

The dramatic episodes could be reminiscent of Joel Schumacher’s “Falling Down” (1993). The cinematic references go deeper.

In one vivid segment Man-su buries his second presumptive victim in a pastoral garden but not before trussing him up like a roast chicken. It is an eerie and unsettling scene—Henry David Thoreau with a chainsaw.

Man-su is an everyman stripped of his Chi, his energy force and male vibration. A gun battle scene recalls the slapstick of the 1920s.

There is much back-and-forth in this film touching on male expectation, self-worth, and the fragility of Ego.

Every moment is pointed and adds to a whole of existential danger. The film creates a menacing collage of visual origami that is certain to keep you guessing.

The final scene is arguably the most potent, illustrating a staccato march of machines. Man-su is in miniature, a man of tiny Legos in a red hat resembling a DEVO cone. In its chaos and hectic pace, the segment is an AI version of Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times.” Man-su is a digital ringleader, a pixelated president, an authoritarian cog in an unemotional wheel.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com