No Other Choice

Thursday March 12 @ 7 pm

Comedy / Crime / Drama / Thriller
14A – 2hr 19min

No Other Choice is a darkly comedic thriller by acclaimed director Park Chan-wook that critiques modern work culture and the desperation of unemployment. The film follows Man-soo, a laid-off paper mill manager, as he navigates absurd job interviews and ultimately resorts to extreme measures, blending humor with a sharp social commentary on identity and worth in a capitalist society.

Park Chan-wook is a director who understands the mechanics of escalation. Whether he is building desire and intensity in The Handmaiden or diving into ultimate darkness with Oldboy, this legendary Korean auteur relishes in pushing his characters to the breaking point and seeing them unravel. In No Other Choice, he explores the desperation of an unemployed worker willing to use any means to get a job. The result is a film that is both darkly funny and harrowingly chilling.

No Other Choice has no shortage of violence or laughs. The film begins with Man-soo (played brilliantly by Korean superstar actor Lee Byung Hun) hugging his family. He seems to have it all: a loving wife, two great kids, two golden retrievers, a beautiful house, and a job that he loves. Since this is a Park Chan-wook film though, we know that this bliss is short lived.

The first thing to go is the job: after 25 years working for Solar Paper, Man-soo is unceremoniously laid off. As his family’s financial situation grows increasingly dire and new employment is hard to come by, Man-soo feels like his options are increasingly limited. With seemingly no other choice, he embarks on a plan to eliminate his competition… by any means necessary. It seems that, when it comes to job hunting, the process can be literally cutthroat.

Park is a maximalist, and that shines in both No Other Choice’s form and narrative. Park and Co.’s script, adapted from Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax, is razor-sharp, riddled with smart and complex metaphors for the underbellies of capitalism. Perhaps the most striking metaphor is the importance of paper. It’s no coincidence that the story takes place in the paper-making industry. Characters often discuss how paper—and by extension, their jobs—power the world. After all, money is made of paper in all its forms (a character even mentions at one point how their former company’s paper would make lottery tickets). The idea of You and his competitors producing this material gives them a false sense of power and the pretense that they drive the world. In reality, they’re just cogs in the machine, evidenced by their companies’ decision to terminate them when they’re no longer needed to generate revenue.

It’s also interesting to see how the idea of having “no other choice” manifests in the film, both when directly stated by characters and when implied. The same “no other choice” that the Americans claim when firing You echoes in his reasoning to kill those who threaten him. “No other choice” implies only one solution, but it also reinforces the idea of having no control. This notion of capitalism as a force driving characters—where identity is defined by employment status or perceived success—is striking and well developed. The bloody, violent nature of the film’s dog-eat-dog world is extremely well earned and impossible to forget.

Chan-wook’s fondness for dark stories—mixing the traits of film noir with a sharp critique of neoliberal modernity—is on full display, yet he never abandons the black humor, which spreads as contagiously as the madness itself. What he delivers is a perverse pressure cooker that serves up laughs and shrieks in equal measure. Initially unnerving in a slow-burn fashion and eventually catastrophically depraved, No Other Choice is potently harsh, unflinchingly amoral, and sinfully enjoyable. Pure noir zaniness.

What is clear is that No Other Choice is a tonal masterpiece and one of the best screenplays of 2025. Told with Park’s usual visual virtuosity and stylistic flair, it is a chilling satire on how our economic structures reward mercilessness. The film may be set in Korea, but its themes—economic anxiety, status obsession, moral compromise—are global. This tension is part of the film, says Park: “It may look funny from other people’s perspectives, but, to the character himself, he is just desperately trying to survive and is in a tragic situation. That is what black comedy is.”