He worked hard, adapted to his surroundings, and invested in his life. A house with a garden. A family. A hobby that requires patience and promises control. A life that seems to prove that effort pays off. At least until an algorithm becomes more efficient than he is. Until his job disappears and he is quietly replaced.

In No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook is less interested in the shock of dismissal than in what follows. In the slow erosion of an identity almost entirely defined by work. In the question of what remains once productivity is stripped away. And in the brutal realization that the middle class now faces the same material precarity it once tried to distance itself from. Capitalism makes no distinction. It renders everyone disposable.

Man-su begins as a proud man of principle. Loyal to those who work under him. But as he falls, the film reveals how quickly solidarity fractures when personal status is at stake. In encounters with other unemployed men, he projects the questions he refuses to ask himself. Why not sell the house? Why not find another job? Only when he meets men who preserve their dignity through adaptation, humility, or simply carrying on does something begin to shift. Not for the better.

No Other Choice is not a film about a man who becomes a murderer. It is a film about how systemic pressure leads people to romanticize their own exploitation. Park contrasts the vulnerable human body with the smooth two-dimensionality of paper. Applications. Contracts. Termination notices. Life reduced to documents.

The humor that runs through the film only makes it darker. The absurdity offers no relief. It exposes. In the end, Man-su receives what he sacrificed everything for. A position. But the workplace is a robotics factory. Cold and devoid of people. He celebrates anyway and his transformation is complete.