No Other Choice Poster

Park Chan-wook tries to unscamble Sartre to get satire, but something is missing. This grim fable repeatedly evoked for me other (and maybe better) films like The Last Seduction and Jean de Florette and the writing of Ted Chiang.

That said, as AI turns toxic in the public’s eye, I think this film might be establishing the leitmotif of the latter half of this decade. Science fiction has always approached robots and advance machines as an other that we ourselves have created. And, as with Terminator it is usually portreyed as something that will bring us together and bring out the best in humanity.

But this film suggests otherwise - that technology is going to amplify our worst impulses in us, as humans turn on one another in competition for the last remaining job. Bleak and a little hilarious.