‘No Other Choice’ Review: Park Chan-wook’s Jet Black Comedy Reminds Us Why He’s One of the Best in the Game [B+] Venice
The first sign of violence in No Other Choice comes when our protagonist, paper factory manager You Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) explains the difference between losing your job in America versus losing your job in Korea. In the US, that’s getting axed. It’s Britain, it’s the even less daunting proverbial sack. But in Korea… Man-su mimes a throat being slit.
Park Chan-wook has followed up his acclaimed Decision To Leave, which was shortlisted but not nominated for an Oscar, with a broader and more accessible black comedy with the dark heart that Park has turned into a personal brand. He’s loosely adapting the late-90s crime novel The Ax, by the American writer Donald Westlake. But as Man-su has already explained, axe doesn’t quite cut it in Korea. The successful father-of-two sees his happy, comfortable life in the home he grew up in at risk when the paper company he works at is bought by an American parent company and downsizing begins. Despite winning the prized Pulp of the Year Award in 2019 – the trophy looks like it’s made out of paper – even Man-su is threatened.
Though as an employee he is well-regarded, Man-su is fundamentally replaceable. No Other Choice doesn’t over-feed us on “AI is coming” fears, but it’s a relevant threat. Meanwhile Man-su’s fears of being swapped out extend to the home: his wife Lee Miri (a brilliant Son Ye-jin), who is father to a son not biologically Man-su’s, is tempted by a handsome local dentist. Man-su’s sexual jealousy and anxiety about his home life is a mitigating factor in his crisis, which begins in full flow when his company decides to get rid of him. The American owner tells him: “We have no other choice.”
Here’s where things get strange and Park Chan-wook reminds us this is a Park Chan-wook movie. Man-su insists he will stay in the paper industry – he, too, apparently has no other choice – and intends to fight for a place in a different company, Moon Paper. He conspires to create a fake firm and recruit those likeliest to challenge him for a role in the company. That allows him to track them down, and put them out of contention.
But Man-su isn’t a natural hitman – his only training is in paper, remember – so it’s no surprise when his plot spirals before it even starts. If you’ve seen Robert Hamer’s seminal Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, this might sound familiar. That centres around an obscure member of a noble dynasty who must kill the eight members ahead of him in the line of succession to inherit his fortune. Park wisely doesn’t take the note of having them all played by Alec Guinness, more often than not in a silly wig. But he does largely take on that film’s irreverent tone: though interested in class, gender politics and a crisis in Korean masculinity, No Other Choice is remarkably light of touch. Its jokes land and some of its performances verge on comedic.
Set to a score laced with harpsichord, Mozart and cello, its craft generally works against the hopelessness at its centre. Park leaves the implications of Man-su’s scheme, and what it is doing to him, largely as subtext. That feels like a wise decision and is yet another reminder, in case we needed one, that we’re dealing with a serious, accomplished filmmaker. No Other Choice isn’t Park’s flashiest film. And it can sometimes feel like he’s trying to have a laugh after the intensity of Decision to Leave. But its tone never feels like a compromise on Chan-wook’s characteristic interest in the toughness of life. That’s here for all to see.
In that way No Other Choice feels like a quintessentially Korean movie: nervous about what happens when the family structure breaks down, skeptical about American hegemony, still haunted by its damaging wars with the North and a failure to reach a common understanding. Man-su isn’t all that different from the father in Parasite, played by Song Kang-ho, a similarly anxious, disillusioned figure failing to balance his responsibility to his family with the expectation to do the right thing. Only one of those things can survive. Sometimes there’s no other choice.
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival. NEON will release No Other Choice theatrically in the U.S. this fall.
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