As dark comedies with a social commentary edge go, Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is quite satisfying. It’s a clever, bold, ambitious film that is never quite as clever, bold or ambitious as it sets out to be. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a host of delights to be found in this sensational satiric sit.
Based on The Ax, a 1970s novel by Donald E. Westlake, the film centers on Man-su (an irreverent Lee Byung-hun), a paper manufacturing plant employee who is fired by the new American owners who use, “no other choice,” as their excuse for the layoffs. And while Man-su futilely looks for another job—he stubbornly refused to seek out anything outside of the paper industry—the bills pile up and his wife, Miri (Son Yejin) decides the family must downsize, which means shipping the beloved dogs off to the grandparents and selling the beloved home where Man-su grew up. No one is happy, least of all his two children (Kim Woo Seung & Choi So Yul).
The decision Man-su makes in order to guarantee his securing the job he most desires is where the film takes its elaborate, absurdist, horror detour. Suffice to say things turn wonderfully grisly, allowing for the director to make some timely statements about the state of the world and just how that divide between the upper and lower classes has grown as well as how corporate greed is allowed to exist at a new level of crazy. The film also delves a bit into how AI is destroying job opportunities for actual humans.
There’s murderous mayhem, a wackadoodle snakebite scene, and a painful tooth extraction moment as Man-su goes to extreme lengths in order to secure the right job.
It’s all very playfully homicidal.
The importance of paper vs. digital speaks volumes to what the auteur is getting at—technology eviscerating any semblance of the old ways. And there’s a fair debate to be had about just how these material things are bad for the environment and how we, maybe, should simplify. Just as long as I can still have my Blu-rays and 4Ks! Missing the point, Frank. No, I got the point…we have no other choice…
No Other Choice is South Korea’s International Feature Oscar submission.
The film had it’s World Premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival and is a Main Slate offering at this weekend’s New York Film Festival and is being released by Neon in select theaters Christmas Day and everywhere in January 2026.
