Film reviews: No Other Choice | H is for Hawk | Saipan | The History of Sound

No Other Choice (15) ★★★★

H is for Hawk (12A) ★★

Saipan (15) ★★

The History of Sound (15) ★★

No Other Choice finds Korean auteur Park Chan-wook on more mirthful form than in the recent Decision to Leave with a jet-black tragicomic takedown of capitalism and corporate downsizing in the modern age. If that makes it sound grand, rest assured that the Handmaiden and OldBoy director’s proven ability to glide between different modes of storytelling within a single movie makes this a state-of-the nation satire devoid of assaultive polemics and rich in pulpy genre thrills — literally and figuratively in terms of the latter: it’s based on American crime writer Donald E Westlake’s novel The Ax and revolves around a veteran employee of a paper factory who turns serial killer to bump off his competition when he’s fired from his job.

Transposing the story to South Korea, Park begins in high style with his protagonist, Yoo Man-su (Squid Game star Lee Byung-hun), revelling in his perfect life. But things are about to change. As his company’s new American corporate owners inform him they have “no other choice” but to restructure the firm by automating more of their production to stay competitive, he’s shocked to discover he’s among the first employees to be let go and soon finds himself participating in humiliating group therapy sessions for the recently redundant. What’s a middle-aged man who knows nothing else to do but start eliminating the competition for what few jobs are left?

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Park’s ability to compound Man-Su’s desperation in darkly funny ways helps make us weirdly complicit in his scheme, especially as his initial attempts at murder take on farcical levels of absurdity. But as Man-Su’s supportive wife (Son Ye-jin), his adopted son and his autistic daughter are enveloped in his terrible plan to secure a job and save their family home (which has a dark secret of its own), Park starts puling the rug from under us, building up to a grim punchline about the future of work that’s scarily resonant as AI is being loosed upon the world with such reckless abandon.

Helen Macdonald’s best-selling grief memoir H is for Hawk gets a perfunctory and awkwardly plotted adaptation courtesy of director Philippa Lowthorpe and co-writer Emma Donoghue. Where the book charted the year Macdonald spent grieving the sudden death of her beloved father by training a goshawk and researching a biography of Sword in the Stone writer TH White, the film condenses her significant mental health journey into an implausibly brief few weeks. Thus we’re expected to believe Macdonald (played with conviction by Claire Foy) goes from being a Cambridge academic to a semi-feral recluse who bonds with her bird, ditches her fellowship and loses her home in the time it takes her family to arrange the memorial service for her photographer father (Brendan Gleeson). Though the scenes with Foy and Mabel the goshawk are well done, too much of it is composed of unconvincing, theme-explicating scenes that feel as intrusive as the over-bearing score and the performative smoking Foy’s Macdonald indulges in through out.

Dramatising the very public fall-out between Ireland-born Man United star Roy Keane and the Republic of Ireland coach Mick McCarthy in the run up to Ireland’s 2002 World Cup campaign in Japan and South Korea, Saipan begins with a lengthy disclaimer that much of what you’re about to watch is essentially made up. That’s probably just as well given co-star Steve Coogan’s involvement, but it also helps explain why none of this locker-room sports drama feels particularly convincing.

Coogan plays McCarthy as a kind of bumbling, laurel-resting ex-player content ride out his career coaching a national team no one expects much from; Éanna Hardwicke, meanwhile, plays Keane as a stoic, laser-focused athlete who understands the changing nature of the game. Conflicting viewpoints established, the film presents Keane early on as an outlier by having him identify with Muhammed Ali and proceeds to over-egg everything from there by portraying the rest of the Irish team as a bunch of drunken degenerates. Given Ireland ended up doing pretty well at the 2002 World Cup, the film succeeds only in making it all seem like a meaningless storm in a teacup.

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The ubiquitous Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor unite for The History of Sound, a pretty turgid Brokeback Mountain retread that feels a long way from the progressive queer stories both actors have starred in over the last few years. They play a pair of early 20th century American musicians who fall for each over their shared love of folk music and spend a summer traversing the US collecting songs in an effort to document the country’s oral tradition. But as film zeroes in on Mescal’s Lionel as he embarks on an illustrious, decades-spanning career in search of the happiness he once felt, it never soars emotionally; the epic sweep of the story is mostly at odds with the thinly conceived characters.

All films in cinemas from 23 January

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