New releases: No Other Choice, GOAT, Fackham Hall

It’s a lovely touch that Director Park Chan-wook¹ has ded­ic­ated No Other Choice to dir­ect­or Costa-Gavras who made the first adapt­a­tion of Donald Westlake’s 1997 nov­el, The Ax, back in 2005. Park came to the nov­el without know­ing about the earli­er film but Costa-Gavras still owned the rights and helped with its development.

Costa-Gavras (now 93) is fam­ous for his polit­ic­ally charged films like Z and Missing and in 2005 a film about the dehu­man­isa­tion of redund­ancy and cor­por­ate downs­iz­ing fit­ted right into his wheel­house, but there’s some­thing about how Westlake’s story plays in 2026 that takes it in a fas­cin­at­ing dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion without chan­ging the excel­lent bones at all

Lee Byung-hun plays a paper expert, inex­plic­ably (to him) made redund­ant after an American com­pany buys the com­pany he works for. After 18 months of humi­li­at­ing (to him) unem­ploy­ment and under­em­ploy­ment, he reaches the real­isa­tion that the only way to get the job he needs (or deserves, or has earnt through years of study and exper­i­ence) is to elim­in­ate the com­pet­i­tion – three oth­er unem­ployed sad sacks who are hanging out for a chance to get back in the game.

A pro­fes­sion­al paper maker he might be but he is very much an ama­teur assas­sin and lots of the fun in the film is in watch­ing his ris­ible attempts at murder – far­cic­al attempts worthy of early Coen Brothers films.

At first Lee’s motiv­a­tions seem utterly com­pre­hens­ible. He’s a fam­ily man, a bread­win­ner. He’s an award-winner and a loy­al employ­ee. Logic dic­tates that he take what he’s earnt. But where the 1997/2005 ver­sion of the story was about the ice-cold bru­tal­ity of the cor­por­ate world, nobody in 2026 can look at the paper industry as one that isn’t sun­set­ting rap­idly and its Park’s geni­us that he does­n’t try and update our her­o’s profession.

He – and his tar­gets – are all dream­ing if they think there’s a future for them in paper and one of the themes of the film is that by cling­ing to this dream none of them pay any atten­tion to the real brains of the out­fit, their wives. Busy hold­ing their house­holds togeth­er (or sleep­ing with a deliv­ery boy, or just leav­ing for a life that does­n’t exclude them), the wives give their men the room to dream, scheme, and feel sorry for themselves.

This is also where Park’s approach feels par­tic­u­larly well-grounded in Korea, although I’m sure it’s recog­nis­able everywhere.

Park is one of the great tech­ni­cians of our age. The cam­era is always exactly where it needs to be and moves with a fluid­ity that is very easy to watch. His most recent film, the Hitchcockian Decision to Leave left me a bit cold but I really enjoyed the sly visu­al storytelling on dis­play here. It does­n’t rip your head off like Bong’s incred­ible Parasite but it’s a great watch all the same.

Finally, a quick word on two films that are the product of a simple “what if” ques­tion. Firstly, “What if a goat was an actu­al GOAT?” That stands for Greatest Of All Time and it would appear that in the world of sports you can have many of them simultaneously.

In Tyree Dillihay’s GOAT, anthro­po­morph­ic anim­als play a game called Roarball which is basic­ally bas­ket­ball but where home advant­age counts quite a lot – lava, ice, etc. Larger anim­als dom­in­ate in Roarball – and its pleas­ingly mixed-gender in terms of roster – but when the per­en­ni­al second-bananas the Vineland Thorns need a ring-in, the own­er (Gabrielle Union) recruits a “small” who has made a splash on social media. Orphan goat Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin) has been prac­ti­cing for years to make his late momma (Jennifer Hudson) proud by mak­ing it to the big leagues.

Of course, his path to the cham­pi­on­ship (called “the Claw”) will not run smooth and he will face pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy, cor­por­ate mal­feas­ance and down­right cheat­ing along the way.

There is abso­lutely noth­ing that’s ori­gin­al about this film apart from how it looks and how it sounds but they are ori­gin­al enough to make GOAT a fun film. The voice work is great, the art is remin­is­cent of Sony’s Spider-Verse films while still being its own thing and the music choices land per­fectly, includ­ing yet anoth­er run out for Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”. The New Zealand gov­ern­ment should just go ahead and nation­al­ise that song so we can all benefit.

Watching GOAT, I was reminded that no mat­ter what white suprem­acists and Euro-fetishists like Vance, Rubio and Trump have to say on the mat­ter, the only uniquely American con­tri­bu­tion to glob­al cul­ture comes from African-Americans. And if they wer­en’t dum­basses they would be proud of that.

Fackham Hall is the res­ult of a single ques­tion – “What if there was a film called Fackham Hall?” – and that really was the begin­ning, middle and end of the devel­op­ment pro­cess. Purportedly a par­ody of English upstairs-downstairs dra­mas like Downton Abbey, the poor act­ors (includ­ing Kiwi Thomasin McKenzie) are hung out to dry by a truly ter­rible script and non-existent direction.

They know that this sort of thing is best played Leslie Nielsen-style dead­pan but if there’s no actu­al joke sit­ting behind it we’re all left sit­ting in embar­rassed silence.

1. I inter­viewed Park back in 2013 for the Cinematica pod­cast and learned that he was to be addressed form­ally as “Director Park”. ↩︎