‘No Other Choice’ Is About As Dark As A Workplace Comedy Can Get
You’ll really have ‘No Other Choice’ but to laugh at director Park Chan-wook’s latest film even as it makes you boil over with rage and despair.
Lee Byung-hun stars in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
Opening in theaters on December 25 is ‘No Other Choice,’ directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, and Cha Seung-won.
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Initial Thoughts
Lee Byung-hun stars in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
The films of director Park Chan-wook effortlessly mix and match genres like crime thriller, psychological drama, horror, and satire without breaking a sweat, and usually leaving you stunned by the audacious manner in which they do so. With ‘No Other Choice,’ Park has created an acidic workplace comedy that’s also a dark psychological study, as well as a ruthless condemnation of late-stage global capitalism.
And – no surprise at all – it all works perfectly. While perhaps a tad too long, ‘No Other Choice’ is both entertaining and enraging, incredibly relevant and wickedly absurd – and a sad, prescient look at the way that life is becoming ever so harder to live and the way it drives some of us to desperate behavior.
Story and Direction
(Right) Son Ye-jin stars in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
Based on the novel ‘The Ax’ by Donald Westlake, ‘No Other Choice’ follows Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a manager at a paper manufacturing company who is brutally downsized after 25 years – along with much of his crew – by the American corporation that takes over the plant. Man-su tells his wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) and their children – his stepson Si-one and their neurodivergent daughter Ri-one – that he will quickly find another job within three months.
But more than a year passes and the family is forced to tighten their belts, even sending their dogs to live with her parents and putting their beloved house – Man-su’s childhood home -- up for sale, with their arrogant neighbor interested in buying it. Mi-ri herself also takes a job as assistant to a handsome dentist (Yoo Yeon-seok) and Man-su is soon convinced she’s sleeping with him, even as he himself develops a painful toothache that he refuses to do anything about.
As Man-su works at lousy retail gigs just to earn some money, he becomes obsessed with getting a position at the Moon Paper papermaking company that’s currently held by the awful, self-absorbed manager Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon). Determined to get Seon-chul’s job at all costs, Man-su hatches a plan to kill him, find out who else might be up for the position via a fake job listing, and kill them as well.
Director Park Chan-wook on the set of 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
The precision and complete control of tone with which Park tells this story is illustrated by two sequences in which someone is marked for death. The first veers steadily over the line into full absurdity – almost slapstick comedy – while the second is tragic, horrifying, and a bitter indication of how quickly Man-su is losing his soul, and how heartless the circumstances are that he even gets to that point. Even when the movie is funny – which is more frequently than you might think – it’s also suffused with the kind of existential sadness and fear that working people know all too well.
It's this mix of black comedy and succinct, scathing social commentary that makes ‘No Other Choice’ such a bracing and original work – and it’s scary that it’s relevant right now even though it’s based on a novel written in 1997. We’ll mention again that it is a bit overlong, with some of its subplots struggling for the right amount of attention. But otherwise this is sharp work from Park Chan-wook, with an ending that is equal parts melancholy and unnerving, and it’s also beautifully shot from start to finish by cinematographer Kim Woo-hyung.
Cast and Performances
(L to R) Son Ye-jin and Lee Byung-hun star in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
Lee Byung-hun is perhaps best known to audiences these days as the icy Front Man in ‘Squid Game,’ and his cool demeanor has graced a number of other action and crime films. ‘No Other Choice’ finds him playing a confident, successful middle-class manager, husband, and father who has the rug pulled out from under him, and Lee handles the slow unraveling of Man-su superbly. Equally excellent is Son Ye-jin as his wife, Mi-ri, who becomes the true pillar of strength in the family as her husband’s self-image takes a brutal beating.
Among the supporting players, Lee Sung-min as the dissolute Goo Beom-mo – a would-be rival to Man-su for the Moon Paper job – and Yeom Hye-ran as Beom-mo’s unhinged wife, A-ra, provide one of the film’s funniest moments, while Cha Seung-won is quietly poignant as Ko Si-jo, who waxes nostalgic over his paper factory days while working in a shoe store and expressing his need to spend more time with his daughter.
Final Thoughts
Lee Byung-hun stars in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
With films like ‘Oldboy,’‘The Handmaiden,’ and ‘Decision to Leave,’ Park Chan-wook charts human foibles like vengeance, obsession, and greed, and somehow manages to make his flawed characters relatable and their situations humorous even as they grow more untenable and often grotesque.
That tradition carries on in ‘No Other Choice,’ with its increasingly desperate protagonist and equally distressed supporting characters, each of whom is subjected to some kind of direct or indirect humiliation as a result of the heartless corporate world they find themselves in. All the characters confront the title dilemma at one point or another, and director Park cuttingly reminds us that we might not be too far behind.
‘No Other Choice’ receives a score of 90 out of 100.
Lee Byung-hun stars in 'No Other Choice'. Photo: CJ Entertainment.
What is the plot of ‘No Other Choice’?
After Yoo Man-su loses his job at a paper company when it's purchased by an American company, he launches a desperate plan to kill the other men who are up for a similar job that he wants at another paper manufacturer, so that he can maintain his home, his income, and his family's comfortable life.
Who is in the cast of ‘No Other Choice’?
- Lee Byung-hun as Yoo Man-su
- Son Ye-jin as Lee Mi-ri
- Park Hee-soon as Choi Seon-chul
- Lee Sung-min as Goo Beom-mo
- Yeom Hye-ran as Lee A-ra
- Cha Seung-won as Ko Si-jo
- Yoo Yeon-seok as Oh Jin-ho
- Kim Woo-seung as Yoo Si-won
- Choi So-yul as Yoo Ri-won
Movies and TV Shows by Park Chan-wook
- ‘Joint Security Area’ (2000)
- ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’ (2002)
- ‘Oldboy’ (2003)
- ‘Lady Vengeance’ (2005)
- ‘I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK’ (2006)
- ‘Thirst’ (2009)
- ‘Stoker’ (2013)
- ‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)
- ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ (2018)
- ‘Decision to Leave’ (2022)
- ‘The Sympathizer’ (2024)
- ‘No Other Choice’ (2025)
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