No Other Choice
20257.8movie
People
After being laid off and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager descends into violence in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity.
After being laid off and humiliated by a ruthless job market, a veteran paper mill manager descends into violence in a desperate bid to reclaim his dignity.
Lee Byung-hun in No Other Choice (2025). by Albert Pears. Park Chan-wook has made a movie about a man who sets out to commit murder to get a job, and somehow managed to make it the funniest film of the year—a comedy so black it seems to swallow all the light around it and leave you wondering why you’re laughing so hard at something so genuinely horrifying. “No Other Choice” is that rarest of achievements: a film that works on you like a strange infection, making you complicit in its protagonist’s crimes even as it systematically dismantles every justification he offers for them.
Park Chan-wook has not been much of a genre filmmaker for the last few years, even if his career might have started out that way. His hard-hitting dramas or gritty crime thrillers came to define him throughout his career. With No Other Choice, Chan-wook takes a page from Bong Joon Ho's book by delivering the next best Korean caper to audiences. There's a balance of violence and humor in the 2025 film, but neither hinders the film's main thematic messaging, instead heightening Chan-wook's vision.
