The Americans make a brief appearance at the start of auteur Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice. They're a group of cold-hearted businessmen who have come to South Korea to dramatically downsize the devoted staff of a paper company, loyalty be damned. It's clear that Park finds the heartless "money first, people second" ethos as reprehensible. His anti-hero Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), however, doesn't necessarily agree. Or if he does, he certainly gets over it quick enough as he strategizes how he might get back into a high-paying job in his industry, in light of such ruthlessness.
Since this is a Park film, Man-su's deadly serious determination becomes horrifically literal: He's going to identify who the competition is then murder them one by one. Changing professions is not an option. Selling the family home is not an option either. Competing as an equal has not worked out well so far. For him, murder is the best bet. As the title states, he has "no other choice." [His loyal wife Miri (an excellent Son Ye-jin) is more flexible as well as more adaptable.] Once Man-su's masterplan kicks into action, the killings are quirky more than grisly: a shoe salesman gets twisted into a ball as if he were a bonsai tree; another rival (Park Hee-soon) is buried up to his neck after a night of excessive drinking; a third (Lee Sung-min) is fatally shot by his wife (Yeom Hye-ran), a histrionic actress who's in the midst of a love affair. Park's film may not have the constant cliffhangers of his earlier works but No Other Choice is nevertheless a powerful indictment of unchecked capitalism gone mad, both here and abroad.
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