"At the narrative midpoint, pathetic protagonist Yoo Man-su ( Lee Byung-hun) - also a hobbying horticulturist with a bonsai mag subscription - arrives at the home of a man he deems a rival for one of the only paper jobs on the market. He wields a pistol concealed inside several oven gloves, intending to kill vinyl enthusiast Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) as a means of levelling the playing field."
"But at the crucial moment, he's rendered impotent by his own absurd ploy; succumbing to a sudden empathy for his double, having discovered that Beom-mo's wife is cheating on him. Beom-mo's himself is slumped in a helpless, drunken stupor in the midst of this farce, and has incorrectly identified Man-su as his wife's lover. He crumbles as he questions whether her infidelity is the result of his own failure to secure a new paper-mill job."
Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice is a black comedy about Yoo Man-su, a laid-off paper-mill veteran who resorts to desperate, absurd measures to secure a new job. Man-su confronts rival Goo Beom-mo at his home with a pistol hidden inside oven gloves but becomes incapacitated by sudden empathy upon learning that Beom-mo's wife is unfaithful. Beom-mo, drunk and mistaken, crumbles into self-blame over his failure to find work. The scene explodes into melodrama as two men argue about bad backs and credentials until Lee A-ra shouts, "Losing your job is not the problem. The problem is how you deal with it!" Park adapted the film from Donald E. Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax.
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