"One wouldn't normally place the origin story of a serial murderer among the funniest films of the year, but Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice has a way of making us laugh - and even, at times, root for its anti-hero - in spite of ourselves. For Park's part, comedy was his way into such a bleak and painfully timely tale; less the spoonful of sugar than an ironic wake-up call."
""I believe the most accurate way to portray the reality that mankind is in is to portray both the tragedy and the ridiculousness of the situation that we're in," Park tells Inverse. That's why he adapts Donald Westlake's late '90s horror novel, The Ax, with such acid-sharp humor. It's also the reason he cast Lee Byung-hun as Yoo Man-su, the desperate man who claws his way out of unemployment by murdering his competition."
"Lee has long mastered the role of a sympathetic hero who does terrible, questionable things, a hero you pray sees the light before becoming an all-out villain. "Lee Byung-hun is the only actor where, if his character is doing these heinous crimes, the audience would [never] stop supporting him and in fact, wish him well," Park tells Inverse. "If he's repeatedly doing these bad things, you want him to stop.""
No Other Choice follows Yoo Man-su, a once content middle-class man who loses his job and resorts to murdering competitors to survive. The film blends acid-sharp humor with bleak, timely themes to make viewers laugh and simultaneously sympathize with a morally compromised protagonist. Performances encourage audience support even as actions worsen, turning early perversely funny sequences into a devastating cautionary descent. The tone balances tragedy and ridiculousness to reflect contemporary socioeconomic precarity. The narrative culminates in an ending that underscores human vulnerability and the fraught relationship between desperation and emergent technologies such as AI.
Read at Inverse
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