This review may contain spoilers
Park Chan Wook's most entertaining movie yet. Maybe one that finally earns him his Oscar nom?
No Other Choice is one of those rare films that made me laugh, squirm, and quietly question how far I'd go if pushed into a corner. It's darkly funny, beautifully made, and a little too close to home--a story about pride, desperation, and what’s left of us when survival becomes the only goal. The title insists there's "no other choice", but that's the cruel irony, there are always other choices, just not the kind that let you keep everything you've built your pride on.The setup hits hard. Man Su (played by Lee Byung Hun) loses his job and starts to unravel, and the fear isn't just about money but also identity, about what is left when the work that defined your worth disappears. In a capitalist world obsessed with efficiency and cost-cutting, and how human labor can be easily replaced by robots/AI, that anxiety feels sharper than ever. [Ironically, Park Chan Wook was expelled from the WGA just two months ago for continuing work as an editor during the 2023 WGA strike, which protested the use of AI to replace writers. Timing doesn’t get sharper than that.]
No Other Choice treats unemployment as transformation, but for the people living it, it still feels like failure. The job competitors Man Su meets along the way mirror parts of himself, and the less time we spend with them, the less human he seems to become. Even his toothache, throbbing whenever guilt creeps in and ending in its removal, quietly tracks how far he is willing to go.
The movie walks a fine line between empathy and irony, treating the absurd premise of "eliminating" job competitors with the dry rhythm of office bureaucracy. The humor doesn't come from punchlines, it comes from restraint--the awkward gestures, the small silences, the moments that feel too human to laugh at without guilt.
Park Chan Wook lets those moments breathe. He stretches time just enough for the absurdity to hit, so you end up laughing and immediately wondering if you should have. It's darkly comic in that uncomfortable, Park Chan Wook way.
There's one scene I keep thinking about: a tense confrontation that should've been horrifying but somehow becomes comedic. The music swells until it drowns out all dialogue, leaving only gestures and anxious movement. It's one of those moments where you're half-laughing, half-holding your breath, wondering if you even want him to succeed. It's the movie's tonal centerpiece, the best example of how Park folds comedy and dread into one perfect beat.
Visually, No Other Choice is stunning. It's a full cinematic experience. Every frame feels intentional, even when no one’s speaking. The cinematography is so deliberate that the images often carry the story themselves. The direction is precise almost to a fault. Every camera move, cut, frame and screen transition suggests control, even as the story unravels underneath.
Light becomes its own character. The film starts in warm sunlight, matching Man Su's illusion of stability, and slowly fades into gray and artificial tones as his humanity erodes and his world turns mechanical. Even in the opening barbecue, when clouds slide over his smiling family, the coming darkness is already there. The autumn palette--all muted golds and dying reds--turns beauty into warning. Everything glows because it’s decaying.
The camera placement is equally purposeful. It doesn't follow Man Su, it watches him. It's like we're standing behind a window or bushes or trees, quietly complicit, as he prunes away his conscience, just like the bonsai in his greenhouse.
Characters are often shot through glass or metal reflections, showing not who they are but who they pretend to be. One shot splits the frame with rocks: on one side, a storm rages; on the other, Man Su carries out his plan. It's a simple composition, but it captures everything the film is about, the inner storm of a man convincing himself he has "no other choice".
If the direction is the engine, then Lee Byung Hun is the heartbeat. His performance is all about the quiet breakdowns and small, painful attempts to stay composed. The guilt shows in his eyes, in the smile that never quite fits, in every hesitation. Even his comedy comes from that restraint, until he suddenly breaks it with an awkward dance or clumsy movement.
Son Ye Jin doesn't need big gestures to leave a mark. You can see her thoughts shift across her face as she processes everything quietly falling apart around her. Her smile tightens scene by scene, her wardrobe fades from bright to muted, and that subtle change says everything about what she’s holding in.
Yeom Hye Ran is the scene stealer for me. I've always loved her in everything, and this is no exception. I'm used to seeing her in more ordinary ahjumma roles, so it caught me off guard how elegant and beautiful she looks here. She brings a sharp, unpredictable energy, switching from tense to funny in a heartbeat, and she makes every darkly comic moment land without ever breaking tone.
The rest of the cast fits perfectly around them. Lee Sung Min’s quiet desperation made me feel for him, Cha Seung Won brings a worn out melancholy, and Park Hee Soon adds just the right amount of smugness. Together, they make the movie feel deeply human. It's not about heroes or villains, just people trying to survive and losing small pieces of themselves along the way.
Compared to the operatic violence of Oldboy, the seductive chaos of The Handmaiden, or the quiet yearning of Decision to Leave, No Other Choice feels like a more grounded Park Chan Wook, more deliberate, and less interested in shock than precision. The violence here is quieter but hits closer to home.
In some ways, it reminded me of Parasite: that same perfect balance between arthouse and crowd-pleaser. It might even be Park Chan Wook's most accessible film, and honestly, his funniest. And really, if anyone deserves an Oscar nomination at this point, it's him. This could finally be the one.
On a cerebral level, there's almost nothing to fault about the movie. Maybe the third act stretches a bit long, or the final twist feels a bit tacked on, but those are minor personal quibbles. What stuck with me most was that slight sense of detachment while watching this move. It's fascinating, funny, and beautifully made, but I never felt fully immersed in its world the way I did with Parasite.
That said, just like Parasite, you don't have to catch every symbol or metaphor to enjoy the movie. It's engaging, darkly funny, and sharply observed in a way that lingers. I'm giving the rewatch value a 10, because I'm sure seeing it again would reveal more, the small visual cues, the quiet ironies, the things I only notice when I already know how it ends.
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Buried Choices
Let me say first: this movie had me morally split during its runtime, but the ending was so satisfactory that I have to give it a perfect score of 10. Director Park Chan-wook shows that he is a master of the art, with great cinematography and an unusual, unique approach to storytelling. Some people call this a comedy, but for me it was not comical. It was soul-crushing in the way it showed the spiral of choices that lead one man and one family through life’s challenges.From the technical side, the movie is very enjoyable, with a few hard-to-watch moments, but if you know the director, this is nothing. The best part for me was the music and the symbolism of the plants that beautifully grow from the secrets buried underneath. The actors also deserve all the praise.
What makes this movie perfect for me is that it has many layers and a rich complexity that provokes the viewer to think about it. It speaks about our capitalistic society and serves as a mirror to reflect on our own choices and everything we have buried in the fight for survival/success. I needed a few hours to settle my thoughts before writing this review. The movie poses two big moral questions: the illusion of inevitability that masks our choices, and the justification for sin. (Actually, there is no sin if there is no God, so in a world without moral authority everything becomes permitted and justified.) I won’t go deeper here so as not to spoil the movie, but I will surely have a lot of conversations about it.
PS. Do trees have a choice?
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A Literal Cut-Throat Competition in the Hallways of Survival…
I expected the usual Korean workplace chaos people dragging each other down to climb one step higher but this film tightens that idea into something more focused. It shows exactly how exhausting, competitive and unforgiving the ladder really is…It’s pure Park chan-wook’s madness masterpiece!What works best is the quiet nod to the future…AI waiting around the corner, not loudly threatening, just silently preparing to take over the jobs everyone’s fighting so desperately to keep.
A neat, grounded reminder that sometimes the system itself is the villain, not the people caught inside it…
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This review may contain spoilers
A Hollow Attempt at Dark Comedy
Not Other Choice” is a film that never justifies its own length.From the very beginning, it becomes clear that Park Chan-wook does not have a grip on dark comedy. The film mistakes boredom for depth and builds a structure that is scattered, heavy, and unfocused. It tries to criticize everything—family, society, ethics, justice, media—but ends up saying nothing.
The so-called humor is completely absent. Every line feels clumsy, improvised, and painfully forced. After the first thirty minutes, the movie becomes almost unbearable. The characters are surprisingly unlikable—rare for Korean cinema—and the protagonist goes from being laid off to committing murder without any believable motivation.
The attempt to adapt Western satire to a Korean context simply doesn’t work. The values, tone, and moral foundations don’t translate, and the story collapses under its own confusion.
Lee Byung-hun tries, but never looks natural.
Son Ye-jin is the only redeeming element: every scene she’s in carries more emotional truth than the entire script.
In the end, the film feels like a mix of Breaking Bad and Ozark—but with none of the intelligence, tension, or moral clarity that made those works great.
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We had no other choice
Electrifying dark humor and classy satirical reflection of society's cruelest reality, the cutthroat job and career struggle, also the only means of survival in this modern humanity, all masterfully crafted into pin point accuracy of irony that is deep down at our heart. Director Park Chan Wook's signature touches at the panning and transitions are still as significant as ever, he is literally the acclaimed king of cinematography in Korean cinema. The plot is really exhilarating to follow and with character design that properly resembles the dread in this reality, the acting performances definitely injected the soul needed for this movie, it's a complete package of audio visual feast loaded in clever ridicule of how fragmented this world we are in.Was this review helpful to you?
Losing a job has never felt this dangerous
When you lose your job to a faceless international acquisition, people tell you to stay calm, update your résumé, and “trust the process.” No Other Choice asks a simpler, more honest question: what if you didn’t?Park Chan-wook takes the familiar, soul-sucking language of corporate survival and stretches it until it snaps. Lee Byung-hun plays a man who does everything right—polite, qualified, composed—and still gets erased. What follows isn’t a descent into madness so much as a grim recalibration. If the system treats employment like a zero-sum game, why shouldn’t he?
The film’s genius lies in how ordinary everything feels. There’s no operatic villainy here, no grand speeches. Just meetings, interviews, messages left on read. Park shoots phones, screens, and digital interactions with the same tension most directors reserve for knives. A vibration in a pocket feels like a threat. A delayed reply feels like a verdict. It’s quietly terrifying because it’s so familiar.
Lee Byung-hun is devastating in his restraint. You can see the calculation happening behind his eyes, the slow replacement of hope with efficiency. He doesn’t lash out—he optimizes. Violence, when it comes, feels procedural, almost professional, as if it were simply the next logical step in personal branding.
There’s a pitch-black humor running through all of it. The film understands how absurd corporate language becomes when placed next to genuine human desperation. Words like “opportunity,” “fit,” and “growth” start to sound obscene when livelihoods are on the line.
No Other Choice isn’t just a thriller—it’s a workplace horror film for the modern age. It captures the quiet panic of being disposable, the shame of competing with strangers who look exactly like you, and the terrifying thought that maybe the system is working as designed. Park Chan-wook doesn’t exaggerate reality here. He just follows it to its most uncomfortable conclusion.
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This Isn't The New Parasite
I’ve watched almost all films by Park Chan-wook—Thirsty, Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and more. Compared to those, No Other Choice turned out to be a poor choice for me personally.Many people are comparing this movie with the Oscar-winning Parasite, but honestly, I don’t understand why. The themes, impact, and emotional grip feel very different.
I was genuinely excited because of the stellar cast—Lee Byung-hun, Cha Seung-won, Park Hee-soon, and Son Ye-jin. With such powerful actors, my expectations were naturally high.
That said, I wouldn’t say the movie is bad. It just wasn’t my type of genre. The storytelling and tone didn’t connect with me the way Park Chan-wook’s darker, more intense films usually do.
In short, No Other Choice might work for some viewers, but for someone who loves Park Chan-wook’s earlier, more disturbing and emotionally charged cinema, this one felt underwhelming.
⭐ Personal verdict: Not bad, just not for me.
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The Weight of a Life
This is my first review here, and I felt compelled to write it because this film left an ache that wouldn’t fade. Some films don’t ask for your attention, they quietly take hold of it. This one does exactly that. It doesn’t rely on grand gestures or loud statements; instead, it unfolds with a calm, unsettling clarity that stays with you long after it ends. It reveals a truth we usually step around, a truth that feels too sharp to look at directly.What struck me most is the film’s attempt to level the hierarchy we have built between ourselves, animals, and even trees. It quietly challenges the viewer: if your heart aches at the death of a human, do you feel even a fraction of that sorrow when a pig falls, or when a tree is cut down? And if their loss can so easily be dismissed with the phrase ‘no other choice,’ then what keeps us from using the same justification for a human life?
This question unsettles me because it exposes how selectively we apply empathy, how readily we excuse one death while mourning another. It makes me wonder: are our feelings only based on familiarity, or on the assumption that human life is somehow more valuable?
Is the value we assign to life truly inherent, or just a comforting idea we cling to?
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