The idea of sitting down for two hours to watch a film about unemployment isn’t exactly the most exciting, but Park Chanwook’s No Other Choice will drag you into the job hunt of recently-fired paper mill manager Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) and keep you hooked throughout his increasingly unhinged attempts to quite literally kill the competition.

Compared to Park’s previous projects, such as The Handmaiden (2016) or Oldboy (2003), No Other Choice takes on a more outright comedic tone, with physical comedy that borders on slapstick and hits each time.

This success is largely owed to Lee Byung-hun, whose twenty-year friendship with Park—beginning with their collaboration in 2000’s Joint Security Area—shines in his performance. There is a sense of real chemistry between Lee’s physical performance and Park’s absurd ideas. Lee’s immersion and understanding of Man-su as a character makes it so that, when interviews quickly turn to murder, it doesn’t once feel as insane a jump as it should. Lee not only sells the absurdity of Man-su quite literally stumbling through killings, but—despite deranged choices such as trussing one victim up like a pig and feeding another raw meat—somehow endears us to him too.

This is because Man-su is not a supervillain. His murders are not at all calculated and he almost fails a great number of times. Man-su’s appeal as a character lies in the fact that he is, at his core, a deeply pathetic man clinging to the last dregs of his dignity—his job—and driven to the most desperate of extremes in his attempts to preserve it. This is the mantra Man-su repeats to himself throughout the film and the killings: he has no other choice.

Or does he? While Man-su momentarily submits to a retail job, he continues to insist that paper is his passion and refuses to give up his search. This is a trait shared by Man-su’s victims, his foils. In the film’s standout scene, where Cho Yong-pil’s song “Redpepper Dragonfly” drowns out a shouting match between Man-su and soonto-be victim Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min), Man-su tells Beom-mo that he should have listened to his wife’s sensible suggestions: stop obsessing over paper, sell the house if he needs money, and accept working retail to support his wife. The irony being that Man-su also refuses to listen to his own wife, refuses to sell his own house out of pride, and ditches his own retail job at the first opportunity.

The moment is a mirror held to Man-su’s face, but the music is too loud for the reality to be heard.

Man-su’s plight is not dissimilar to any student or struggling graduate

Man-su’s plight is not dissimilar to any student or struggling graduate. When, like him, you invest your whole life into a field, only to be thrown aside? What do you do then? What happens when your life’s work is reduced to fumbled interviews and job rejections? Most of us probably wouldn’t resort to murder, but Man-su’s determination to prove his worth in a scarily competitive job market is uncomfortably relatable.

And so is what happens to him in the end: Man-su gets the job... but not really. He gets a job, the sole overseer of a new AI-run factory. The final scene of the film is an impersonal montage of machinery. Man-su’s victory lap is a silent walk around an empty, dark factory. Contrast this to the start of the film, where Man-su revels in the papermaking process and talks avidly with his colleagues in shots that are bright and joyful. Simply put, the job Man-su lost and fought to get back no longer exists. It has been replaced by machinery - an uncomfortably real conclusion to a film which, as surreal as it seems on the surface, is a sobering reflection of the relationship between self-worth and employment in our own lives.