Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour No Other Choice About this episode No Other Choice is a new bleak comedy about a man (Lee Byung-hun) at a crossroads. After losing his job at a paper company, he resorts to desperate, unhinged measures to get a new job. He tracks down the other candidates and eliminates the competition, one by one. Directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), it’s filled with great performances and truly masterful action set pieces.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:19 Aisha Harris? Director Park Chan-wook knows how to craft dark and suspenseful thrills. See "Old Boy," "The Handmaiden," and "Decision to Leave." His latest feature is "No Other Choice," a bleakly comical commentary that's sure to satisfy his fans and quite possibly reel in some new converts to his style of mayhem.
0:36 Speaker 02 It's South Korea's entry for the Oscars International Features category, which isn't surprising. It's a very fun adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel "The Axe," with great performances and truly masterful action set pieces. I'm Glen Weldon.
0:48 Aisha Harris? And I'm Aisha Harris. And today, we're talking about "No Other Choice" on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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2:13 Aisha Harris? Joining us today is Walter Chow. He's a writer, critic, and film instructor at the University of Colorado. Welcome back, Walter.
2:20 Speaker 04 Thanks so much for having me.
2:21 Aisha Harris? Great to have you here. Well, In No Other Choice, Lee Byung-hun, who you may recognize from Squid Game, plays Man Soo, a man at a crossroads. Now, after 25 years, he's been laid off from his job at a paper manufacturer. His beloved childhood home, where he now lives with his wife and children, is on the brink of foreclosure. So he's determined to find a new job in the same industry, but when he tries applying at a different company, it goes badly. He resorts to some desperate, unhinged measures. He tracks down the other job candidates and attempts to eliminate the competition one by one. Man Soo's wife, Myri, is played by Son Ye Chin, and one of his primary targets, Bummo, is played by Lee Sung-min. No Other Choice is in theaters now. And spoiler alert, I think we all really liked this.
3:06 Aisha Harris? We were talking about this before we started rolling. But Walter, give it to us. Like, what are you loving about this film?
3:13 Speaker 04 Man, I just love this movie so much. I'm a huge Park Chan Wook fan, you know, from way back. I like to think of him as the little garage band I discovered before they were cool. And now everybody's, you know, filling stadiums to watch.
3:25 Aisha Harris? Yes.
3:25 Speaker 04 I feel so protective of him because he opened my eyes in a lot of ways to so many things, like how many great movies were coming out of South Korea and have been for so long. You know, he kind of reminded me of Steven Spielberg. I was just really so dazzled by Old Boy the first time I saw it. So I've really been following his career. And this is sort of to your point, Aisha, that I really think it might be a gateway drug for Park Chan Wook for a lot of people. It's not as violent, although there's violence, but it is not as violent or deranged, let's say, as some of his other movies. It's funny, I think, really, really funny sometimes.
3:58 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
3:59 Speaker 04 And I adore Donald Westlake. I mean, I think I even like him better than Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain and those guys. He just has such a... Brilliant way with prose and with crime and there's all the stuff that I love about this, the crime element, the the paper element, you know, there what is it about working at the paper, I guess, that that is so funny to us, but it's so relevant and contemporary. I think, you know, I don't want to steal anyone's thunder. I think Glenn, you said it might be the best movie of the year. It's kind of hard to argue when you're watching it, you know, for me, it's just so well done and beautifully played. No complaints. It is just so much fun.
4:34 Aisha Harris? Yeah, well, you've shown Glenn's hand already, but Glenn, tell us.
4:38 Speaker 02 Oh, this is entirely my jam. This is probably my favorite film of the year. It's a wonderfully nasty piece of work. I love that about it. It's funny, as you mentioned, Walter, but it's not funny in just one way. It is satirical throughout, of course, but there is some wild slapstick in here that really works. It's also, and to your other point, Walter, it's got this great specificity about its subject, about paper making. You'll learn stuff about how paper is made. Who knew that there is like the roll of paper? It's just cool like that. It's also got callbacks in it that I think are going to make a second and third viewing all more fun. One I thought about this morning was at one point, a character says words to the effect of, I'm so frustrated with you that I could turn into a mad woman
5:21 Speaker 02 screaming in the woods. And you're wondering, why would they say that? That's such an odd phrase. And then, of course, it comes back. A mad woman screaming in the woods. This direction is so old school, showy, in a really pleasing way. If he can keep the camera moving in any given scene, he will. There are pans and zooms and fades that are going to put you on the mind of Hitchcock very intentionally. It reminds you that you're watching a movie, if that makes sense. I mean, there's a place for naturalism and for realism and for, you know, what the writer John Gardner used to say, the vivid and continuous dream. But there's also room for this kind of sit back, bitches, this is cinema. And I just love it. And that extends to the sound design, right? There's an early scene where he's tying up this bonsai tree and the foley in that scene goes nuts. It's really loud,
6:06 Speaker 02 the sounds of stretching and straining and it's very, I guess you'd say it's analog or organic or whatever. And you're like, that is a record skip moment because you're like, why are we watching and listening to this so loudly and so conspicuously? And then that also comes back. So, yeah, I'm just going to sit back and listen to you all talk because I got no notes on this thing. Perfect movie.
6:25 Aisha Harris? I had a feeling when I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival that this was gonna be your jam, Glenn. And I'm glad that I know you well enough at this point that I can tell what is gonna be very much your jam. And this was also very much my jam. For those folks who might only know him, Pak Januk for Decision to Leave, which was, it's definitely not his breakout in the Western world movie by any means, but you know, it was one of those movies that I saw on a lot of end of year lists a year that came out a few years ago. So this is a very different movie. That movie is kind of haunting and noirish and very dramatic. And I went into this not really expecting necessarily it to be so funny,
7:05 Aisha Harris? but it is. And there's even a montage that includes Sam and Dave's Hold On, I'm Coming. And I was not expecting this song in this movie, but that's what we've got here. We've got a lot of different genres being played with here. This is also like, yes, it's about desperation and the incoming of technology and all these things that we are actively thinking about, especially all jobs seem to be at the threat of AI and at the threat of rapid innovation, quote unquote innovation, I use that in scarecrows. But like, this is also a story about a man trying to keep his family together. And this relationship between Mansu and Miri is just really interesting, the way that unfolds too, because we learn
7:47 Aisha Harris? so much about them, but in very like piecemeal ways in the way they interact with each other. And we know a little bit about his history and how that might be affecting how he's reacting to not having a job. I just love those little moments. And yes, it's an action thriller. Yes, it's all those things, but it's also, it's got characters that you believe are real and feel real. And that elevates it for me and makes it definitely the type of movie that I want to re-watch again and again.
8:14 Speaker 04 I really love that you mentioned Miri and how interesting a character they make the wife, because she, you know, it's really easy just to overlook that character or just to make her sort of the punchline of continuous terrible revelations. But they don't do that. She's very much an active participant. She gives kind of an interesting meaning to the idea of domestic loyalty. And she's very aware of who she is. And how she moves through the world, you know, when there are really horrible people wanting to buy their house or looking at buying their house because, you know, he's been laid off and the whole crux of the story is he's been laid off from this very specific job. And because he's older and he can't really, you know, this job of making papers going away essentially, a lot of our crafts jobs are going away.
8:54 Speaker 04 To the scare quote innovation, they're coming to look at the house that they may have to put on the market and she's aware of how she's being looked at. And she returns the look and then later Glenn, to your point again, it comes back around. You know, she, she takes a minute to, to amplify, you know, certain touch points and there's such a smart thing about it. We're really involved in this really funny, exciting slapstick, violent sometimes thing that's happening. Just so a person has the right to thump paper.
9:21 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
9:21 Speaker 04 It's so, you know, quotidian and small. I got real existential with this at some point. I was like, really? What am I doing? You know, what is it in the grand scheme of things that's so stinking important? But I love that you bring up Hitchcock too, because Park has said that he was inspired by Vertigo, the movie that pushed him into making movies. I think Decision to Leave, his last film is as a vertigo.
9:42 Aisha Harris? Yes, absolutely.
9:43 Speaker 04 It really feels like, you know, that obsessive, right? This feels like his North by Northwest, which is exactly how Hitchcock followed Vertigo.
9:49 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
9:49 Speaker 04 It's really fun. It's kind of like a greatest hits of Park Chan Wook, like, hey, guys, look, and just like Hitchcock. He's never invisible in his movie. He's always like, watch this one shot that I'm going to carry through a crane through this house. And he also does a extraordinary needle drop of a Cho Young Pil song. Cho Young Pil is South Korea's king of pop. It's called a Red Dragonfly is the song that he uses. It's all layered over this murder sequence where the song is on too loud.
10:16 Aisha Harris? Yes.
10:17 Speaker 04 And this guy's study on his record because he's a poor, sad, middle aged guy like myself.
10:21 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
10:21 Speaker 04 Who, uh, he uses his collections in some ways to define himself and insulate himself from the world, I think. And there's like this complete lack of, you know, Communication, this ability to communicate over the how loud the song is,
10:33 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
10:33 Speaker 04 how ridiculous the situation is. So, you know, that's because of the slapstick that is so beautifully structured.
10:39 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
10:39 Speaker 04 And so beautifully balanced and, you know, and that scene wouldn't work without the scene that came before it, without the scene that came before that, without the scene that came before that. It feels like reading Donald Westlake. You know, it feels like, you know, this is a guy who set up all of his dominos. He's he was up all night. He set up 20,000 dominos, you know, and there's all those little doodads that are flying around and each step is meticulous. And I really felt this guy's gonna take care of you.
11:01 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
11:01 Speaker 04 Whatever happens, this person knows how to make a movie.
11:03 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
11:03 Speaker 04 You know, I often feel like, you know, you watch those movies and you're like, oh, man, I don't know. I don't know if this guy knows what he's doing. Archon, well, you're truly just in the hands of a master and it's so exhilarating.
11:15 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
11:15 Speaker 04 It's so exhilarating. It's a.
11:16 Speaker 02 There is in this movie, a big logical leap in the story of this movie. It's a big logical leap that could seem like a loose end until you realize, no, that's the whole point. I mean, we sympathize with this guy's determination to knock off his competitors. Even though I think their status as his competitors is purely in his head, purely theoretical, because when we meet them, of course, they are just as adrift as he is, just as lost as he is. But then that affinity that they share, that becomes one of the main points of the movie. He overhears one of them talking to his wife. And then later he's parroting exactly that dialogue to his own wife. And that's how this film works on you. Because it's clear in Man Soo's mind that he's taking perfectly logical steps. But this is the great thing about the film, that Mary keeps coming in to say,
11:59 Speaker 02 you don't have to go back to paper. You can just change. All you need to do is change. And it's like that old kids in the hall sketch with like, we are men, we cannot change who we are. For to change would mean to make an effort. Like that's, that's the thing. It's like the theme of this film is that men will become serial killers instead of going to therapy. And I love that about it.
12:20 Aisha Harris? One of the moments where Myri is telling him that is like one of the best examples of having your title of the movie actually be dialogue in the film. Like it works so well, the way it's framed. Like I wrote it on my notes, I was like, oh, yes, this works. That's what adds to the sort of bleakness of this and the sadness at the heart of this story, which is that like he's doing all this, but for an industry that is dying. Like we find out he's one of many people at his company who get let go because they're cutting back. And I think another corporation is buying them. And so there's all the corporate machinations are at work here and are pointing signs that like paper is dying. What are you doing? And the fact that he goes to these lengths. And I love that you note that we sympathize with this character, right?
13:05 Aisha Harris? Even though he's going off and trying to murder people. I really do love that scene you're talking about Walter, where that's the scene with Bummo, uh, played by Lee Sung Min. That is a very extended sequence. And this, this movie reminded me, or maybe just finally crystallized for me that my favorite kinds of movies where we're watching people murder other people. I know this sounds really terrible, but like my favorite kinds of movies where they do this is when the characters are so inept. And it's not just like you're, you're perfect and it's easy. It's like, no, this is what it would be like if this is just like a rash decision that you've just made. And it's not something you fantasize about. It's not something you've dreamed about or meticulously planned. It's like, these are all the ways it can go wrong. And all the things that could possibly go wrong, like he turns it into farce.
13:48 Aisha Harris? He turns it into like you're on the edge of your seat of like, how is this gonna go? And it's so delightful, as dark as it is.
13:55 Speaker 04 Well, and the large overriding themes of it are so fascinating. Once you sit with it for a minute, like there's something so really sad about this. It's like, it's such a humiliating film in so many ways. It's such an emasculating film. And the only people to blame are the men. They're the ones that are setting themselves up to be emasculated this way. There's a scene where he's, you know, begging and begging for a job and he's just, he's on the floor, literally in the bathroom. And I think it doesn't escape Pock, this idea of this ultimate humiliation that we kind of grovel for these. Meaningless possessions doing meaningless things for people we hate. What are we really doing here?
14:34 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
14:34 Speaker 04 And so that, you know, the grand joke of the thing isn't just on the characters in the film, but it's on all of us. It's on this idea of, boy, we have really lost side of the story. We've lost the thread a little bit of our lives. If this is what's the most important thing to us.
14:50 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
14:51 Speaker 04 And whose fault is that? And how do we get it back?
14:53 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
14:53 Speaker 04 I guess is ultimately what I'm left with. And I think that's really the, the beauty among other, so many other beauties of Pock's films. This book was adapted once before by Costa Gavras, the legendary filmmaker. It's called Le Cooperé from 2005, and it's also remarkable. And if you're really like this movie, give that a look to as comparison to see what a more straight adaptation looks like versus what Pock has done, which is really made it regionally interesting for, I think, Korean audiences, but also expanded some of those themes in such a universal way.
15:28 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
15:28 Speaker 04 That I think anybody watching this can feel sort of this, I'm being indicted here, you know, feeling.
15:34 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
15:34 Speaker 04 How far am I away from, you know, considering serial murder if I lose the three jobs that are left doing mild film criticism on the internet? You know, I mean, there's, why am I holding so hard onto something that ultimately doesn't mean anything?
15:48 Aisha Harris? Yeah.
15:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing, Walter, because as smarter people than me, and I'm looking at both of you, could write about how this was based on the Donald D. Westlake novel. And on the surface, it seems like a quintessentially American story in America, where self-worth is so tied directly to work. But its message is so sadly universal that I, I don't know what that says about capitalism and the human condition, but it says something.
16:10 Aisha Harris? It says that it is a universal condition is capitalism. Like, we are all affected by it in some way or another, regardless of where we are. Honestly, some of the best films of the last few years have come out of non-Western filmmakers who are touching on those types of themes, these exact themes. Like, I think I've said this before, and I don't want to merely put them in the same box because they are both South Korean directors, but I do think that Bong Joon-ho's Parasite.
16:36 Speaker 02 Sure.
16:36 Aisha Harris? I saw some similarities to that in terms of just the haves and the have-nots and the gap there and the, what that can lead us to act upon. I do think it's kind of a perfect ending.
16:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is kind of a perfect ending. Yeah.
16:50 Aisha Harris? Yeah. It just really hammers home this feeling of kind of dread around how we think about work and how we think about what we value in life. As you were saying, Walter, it's frickin' bleak, but it also just feels so perfect. And yeah, I have to think about these filmmakers. They're working on these films for a long time. It's not like they just materialize out of thin air. So I just feel like Pock Janik is one of those who's just like, he put his finger in the air and he was like, which way is the wind blowing? And it's blowing this way. And he was absolutely right, because we are here now, where this movie ends. We loved this movie. Maybe you will too. So tell us what you think about
17:31 Aisha Harris? No Other Choice. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/NPRPopCulture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Walter Chow, Glen Weldon, thanks so much for being here and geeking out about this fantastic movie.
17:48 Speaker 04 Thank you. Thanks for having me.
17:51 Aisha Harris? This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Janey Morris, and Mike Katso, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Halil Kamin provides our theme music. And thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happier from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all next time.
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