Man-su begins with an idyllic suburban life: a perfect house, middle management job, loving wife, two children, and two dogs. A crisp fall wind frames an image of domestic bliss as he barbecues eel sent by his employers. The sudden loss of his longtime job at a paper manufacturing company triggers a rapid unravelling of his status and comforts. The narrative plays as a pitch-black social satire blended with light farce, tracking how easily the affluent can lose everything and the desperate, sometimes absurd lengths they undertake to preserve their charmed lives. Physical comedy and pratfalls highlight the protagonist's humiliation and panic.
The opening moments of No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook's pitch-black new social satire, play almost like a dream: Man-su (Lee Byung Hun) has the perfect house, the perfect middle management job, a loving wife, two beautiful children, and two beautiful dogs. A crisp fall wind brings a shower of tiny leaves down on the lawn where he's barbecuing a delicious cut of eel sent to him by his employers.
Thus begins Park's wild and winding new film, a social thriller that feels in many ways like a response to his friend and peer Bong Joon-ho's landmark film. Except instead of a piercing tale of the haves and have-nots, Park has constructed a light and zany farce (and his funniest movie in over two decades) about how easy it is for the haves to lose everything, and the desperate lengths they will go to in order to maintain their charmed lives.
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