The film follows Man-su, a mustached paper manufacturing specialist who is fired after twenty-five years when American investors buy a stake and restructure the company. He once achieved suburban status, interpreting a luxurious eel delivery as proof of success before his position is eliminated. Man-su reacts to termination as if it were an execution, cannot find work in a shrinking paper industry, and refuses to pursue alternative careers. His only prospect is a subordinate role at Moon Paper under a former underling. Humiliated by a disastrous interview, Man-su plots to manipulate circumstances so executives have no other choice.
Plotted with ornate precision but unfolding with the panic of a desperate man, this Vantablack comedy tells the story of a mustached paper manufacturing specialist ("Squid Game" villain Lee Byung-hun as Man-su) who achieves the suburban idyll just in time to be let go from the company where he's worked for the last 25 years. Some American investors have bought a piece of the business, and with it the right to restructure things as they see fit.
The high-end eel meat that Man-su received in the mail should've been his first clue that he was on the chopping block. Instead, Man-su saw it as proof that he'd finally made it. "I've got it all," he sighs over the grill as he barbecues for his smiling wife Miri (Son Yejin) and their two children on the lawn of the brutalist manse he bought as a monument to his success.
But it's already gone. "Off with your head" is a common refrain in Korea when someone gets fired, and Man-su truly reacts to the loss of his job as if it were an execution. He struggles to find another gig in the rapidly contracting paper industry (and to wave away dark thoughts about his dutiful wife fucking her tennis instructor), but there's too much competition for the few spots that remain, and he refuses to consider another career path.
Collection
[
|
...
]