No Other Choice Review: In the Clutches of Capitalism

Director Park Chan-wook’s newest feature, No Other Choice, starts with a scene of sublime middle-class success. Breadwinner Yoo Man-su (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) grills eel given to him by his longtime employer Solar Paper, where he works in a factory among many other veteran laborers. His wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin, who previously starred in the Park-co-written thriller The Truth Beneath) delights at a pair of expensive dancing shoes Man-su has gifted her. Their children – the teenage Si-one and young, neurodivergent Ri-one – are totally immersed in separate but equally pricey pursuits of gaming and cello, respectively. The family home – a remodel of Man-su’s grandfather’s home – is beautiful, with two golden retrievers good-naturedly loping around the yard. As the family hugs under the afternoon sun, the viewer cannot help but see in the darkening sky a massive shoe about to drop.

His follow-up to 2020’s Decision to Leave finds director Park treading similar territory to earlier works like class caper Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Man-su quickly learns his position has been cut along with many of his co-workers in the wake of an American buyout. Set adrift in the modern job market with only his 15-year employment at Solar Paper – including a Paper Man award – his uncomfortable stumbling through humiliation-ritual-esque interviews is matched only by Mi-ri’s stomach-drop realization that their perfect life was always one missed bill away from crumbling. How can they hold on to what was, until three months ago, their very own? As does the lead character in The Ax, Donald E. Westlake’s late-Nineties thriller that No Other Choice adapts, Man-su decides his path forward must be slicked by the blood of his fellow job seekers. There’s no other choice, really, that lets Man-su remain exactly who he thought he was when the film started.

Gorgeously shot by cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung, there are images in this film that stand right up next to the mind-bending iconography of film-nerd favorite Oldboy – including a nasty little scene that echoes the 2003 flick’s mouth-related mutilation. Fade-in cuts help link in the viewer’s mind the absurd with the mundane, as when a grave-digging melds with a character tossing and turning in bed. Desperation and its many consequences never stray far from the family Man-su insists he must protect, and the filmmaking reinforces that in exciting ways worth seeing in a theatre. (Although, despite its early IMAX sneak screenings, I believe audiences will be served just fine by catching this in the standard theatrical screen size.)

Every adult actor puts on a powerhouse performance. Ye-jin delivers an incredible emotional balancing act as Mi-ri processes her husband’s failures at multiple points in the film, while Byung-hun allows the true foolishness of his character to satisfyingly overcome any goodwill earned by his handsomeness. Lee Sung-min, another unemployed paper guy on Man-su’s hit list, is great as a schlubby cuckold, though he’s body-slammed by secret film MVP Yeom Hye-ran as his cheating actress wife Ara. There’s real magic in every paired-off scene where two characters confront each other – creating wonderful clashes of physical human contact that challenge the disassociation insisted on by the system they’re all being run through.

Many characters claim they have no other choice throughout the film – Man-su, the American buying Solar Paper, the other job seekers – but there very obviously are other options aplenty. What sets those choices apart from the mostly disastrous ones made are their required recognition of other human beings as equally worthy of a good life. Empathy or profit, change or the familiar, your life or someone else’s: What choice do we really have? 

This article appears in December 26 • 2025.