“Why Did I Root For This Man To Commit Murder?”
Park Chan-wook and Lee Byung-hun break down No Other Choice’s bleak stance on AI.
One wouldn’t normally place the origin story of a serial murderer among the funniest films of the year, but Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice has a way of making us laugh — and even, at times, root for its anti-hero — in spite of ourselves. For Park’s part, comedy was his way into such a bleak and painfully timely tale; less the spoonful of sugar than an ironic wake-up call.
“I believe the most accurate way to portray the reality that mankind is in is to portray both the tragedy and the ridiculousness of the situation that we’re in,” Park tells Inverse. That’s why he adapts Donald Westlake’s late ’90s horror novel, The Ax, with such acid-sharp humor. It’s also the reason he cast Lee Byung-hun as Yoo Man-su, the desperate man who claws his way out of unemployment by murdering his competition.
Lee has long mastered the role of a sympathetic hero who does terrible, questionable things, a hero you pray sees the light before becoming an all-out villain. “Lee Byung-hun is the only actor where, if his character is doing these heinous crimes, the audience would [never] stop supporting him and in fact, wish him well,” Park tells Inverse. “If he’s repeatedly doing these bad things, you want him to stop.”
Throughout No Other Choice, we want to believe that Man-su can really have it all. Park preys on our optimism, using expertly staged (and perversely funny) sequences to keep us on our toes. Eventually, though, Man-su’s descent feels less like a live-action Looney Tunes segment and a much more devastating cautionary tale. As Park says, it’s tragic and ridiculous in equal measure, and it’s got a lot to say about humanity’s current entanglement with AI.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for No Other Choice.
No Other Choice’s ending, explained
When Man-su, once utterly content with his idyllic, middle-class life, loses his job at a paper mill and finds the rest of his life slipping through the cracks, it’s the first of many gut punches that hit far too close to home. We’re living in a time where even owning a home feels like an unattainable fantasy and where securing a well-paying job in any field is a thing of the past.
In that sense, it’s easy to see why Man-su is driven to such desperation. When he decides to knock off Choi Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), a high-ranking executive at Papyrus Paper and take his job, you feel more sympathy than disgust. Even his idea to slay the two other men with more attractive resumes is a logical one. Competition is fierce no matter where you turn: if you’re going to cross that line, you might as well ensure your efforts will get you results.
“At a certain point, because Man-su is such an inexperienced killer and he’s fumbling with his job, the audience finds themselves saying, ‘Oh, why don’t you just do a better job?’” Park explains. “Then immediately after, you think to yourself, ‘Why did I root for this man to commit murder?’”
Man-su essentially sells his soul to restore his old life, but it’s all for nothing.
Man-su does eventually become an efficient serial killer, much to our collective chagrin. By the time the credits roll, he’s murdered everyone standing between himself and the job of his dreams. Despite a worrying number of near-fails — like his son, Si-one (Kim Woo-seung), discovering his attempts to dismember the corpse of his second victim — Man-su basically gets everything he wanted. By staging the death of Seon-chul and taking his fiercest competitors off the board, Man-su is hired as the line manager of Papyrus Paper without much of a struggle. Life is back to the way it was before, even better in some ways… but Lee calls it “a huge tragedy” regardless.
“Man-su might feel like things are back to the way they were in the beginning,” Lee tells Inverse. “However, that family really can’t go back, because both his wife and his son have this huge secret that they must keep in their hearts.”
Man-su essentially sacrifices his own humanity to keep his family intact, and despite his best efforts, it’s all for naught. His wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) clearly resents him for having to keep his crimes a secret. Si-one seems to fear him. And, per Lee, there’s even the sense that Man-su’s daughter Ri-one — a cello prodigy who refuses to play in front of her parents — is also taking a subtle stance against him.
In the end, it’s Man-su against his entire world: Lee calls it “a huge tragedy.”
“At the end of the film, the daughter is playing music in front of the family perfectly from beginning to end for the first time,” adds Lee. “However, it’s after Man-su has left for work. [That foreshadows] that the family might end up excluding Man-su or pushing Man-su out.”
Then, there’s the final nail in the coffin: the nature of his new job. At his interview with the Papyrus team, Man-su learns that he’ll be overseeing a paper mill run by machines and controlled by artificial intelligence. His daily duties are minimal — Man-su briefly switches on the automated system before it begins its work in total darkness — which brings another sense of dread over his future.
“We don’t know if he’s training the AI or watching over the AI,” Park says. “We don’t know how long they’ll be able to work together for. In the scene where the lights are going off one by one, this is the AI using its own judgment to activate the lights-off system. It’s almost like it’s expressing this opinion for Man-su to get out of this building: ‘We don’t need you anymore.’”
Is there really no other choice?
“It’s very hard” for Park to stay optimistic about our battles with AI.
It’s no wonder that Man-su has to literally take lives in order to get this position at Papyrus: human-held jobs are so rare that it’d have been impossible to score a job at his level otherwise. Flesh-and-blood workers have all been replaced by machines, and Man-su’s own role as supervisor, however hard-won, is on its way out, too. Man-su is training the very system that will eventually phase him out entirely; he essentially sold his soul for a position that’s already slipping through his fingers.
Both Park and Lee regard this revelation as Man-su’s final rejection of his humanity, and anyone whose livelihoods have been threatened or usurped by AI can likely sympathize. Park has been outspoken about the frightening evolution of generative AI, but No Other Choice may be his bleakest comment on it yet. Man-su’s comments about “adapting with the times” are sentiments that countless creatives have echoed this year. So many seem willing to accept the inevitability of an AI-reliant world, and though Park is firmly against it, “it’s very hard to stay optimistic” about our ability to fight back.
“Many people are having discussions and concerns regarding AI,” Park says. “And including myself, many creatives are portraying this issue in their works, as well. I hope that that in itself will lead to policies to adequately use AI without killing off those essential elements of humanity.” Otherwise, we may be doomed to follow Man-su’s path.
