For three decades, the South Korean auteur has remained a virtuoso of the form, and No Other Choice astonishes as the latest movement in his master symphony.
If there were ever any doubts that Park Chan-wook remains one of the most dynamic, technically brilliant, and visionary filmmakers of our time, No Other Choice puts them to rest. With this latest feature, the South Korean auteur returns in top form, delivering an ultra-sharp satire of modern capitalism’s vampiric nature.
An adaptation of Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, Park transplants the story from America to South Korea, centering on You Man-soo, a family man who loses his cushy managerial job at a paper factory and begins eliminating his job competition—literally—in a desperate bid to preserve his utopian suburban life.
You is played by Lee Byung-hun, who undoubtedly delivers one of the year’s great leading performances as a desperate corporate crumb—killing, cheating and clawing his way back to the top of the capitalist food chain, and not-quite wrestling with his moral conscience in the process. International audiences will know Lee as the mysterious gamemaster in Squid Game, but fans of South Korean cinema will have a more intimate relationship with the actor’s work, namely the classics Joint Security Area (another Park film), I Saw The Devil, A Bittersweet Life, and The Good The Bad The Weird, amongst many others.
At the beginning of the film, You is living a checklist of picture-perfect happiness: beautiful wife, big house, two well-behaved children, two dogs. His children’s names are Ri-won and Si-won (one), and his dog’s names are Ri-too and Si-too (two). Check, check, check, check. He cooks barbecues in his giant garden (the fauna in which he has obsessively planted himself), buys new dancing shoes for his committed spouse Mi-ri (played by Son Ye-jin—a powerhouse), and takes great pride in the world he’s created for himself, that will be considered impeccable from the outside looking in as much as it’s considered impeccable by him.
“What follows is the world’s most cutthroat job interview, with Park quickly establishing corporatism as a parasitic force that, with ruthless efficiency, infects the lives of You, his family, and the lives of the men who he begins stalking and promptly knocking off.”
You’s carefully crafted life starts falling apart when a company merger leads to his redundancy. Sure enough, after eight months of failed interviews and overdue mortgage payments, his family begins to feel the sting of You’s unemployment. They are forced to temporarily send the dogs away in order to feed fewer mouths; You’s daughter—a quiet child who doesn’t so much speak as she does mimic the dialogue she hears around her—must give up her precious cello lessons; His wife takes up extra shifts at the dentistry she works at; They even cancel their Netflix subscription (“I better watch a few more episodes before it expires”, Si-won says glumly). It’s at this point that the cogs start turning in You’s mind, and he puts into motion a plan to kill anyone who might compete with him for a managerial position for which he has recently interviewed. He doesn’t necessarily like the idea of cold-blooded murder, he maintains, but what choice does he have?
What follows is the world’s most cutthroat job interview, with Park quickly establishing corporatism as a parasitic force that, with ruthless efficiency, infects the lives of You, his family, and the lives of the men who he begins stalking and promptly knocking off. Like a vampire, for You, sunlight doesn’t bring warmth—it blinds, and he winces under its glare during a job interview he attends early on in the film. Later, You hesitates before killing a fellow candidate upon learning the man has a daughter the same age as his own. For a fleeting moment, empathy flickers. But it vanishes when the man innocently invites him into his shoe shop—sealing his own fate. Another subtle nod to vampirism: an invitation in means certain death.
Masculinity, in No Other Choice, is another poison. Institutionalized, insecure, and narcissistic, it seems to devour everything in its path. One scene sees You scroll enviously through the Instagram of his potential employer, a self-congratulatory alpha male and amateur lifestyle influencer whose Instagram handle is something to the effect of “Bravo_mylife_70” (we later find that his confident online persona is not all it seems). One of You’s victims, a now-unemployed workaholic, has driven his affection-starved wife into the arms of a younger man. These are not just competitors—they’re grim reflections of who You might become if he continues down his increasingly amoral path.
“Where some directors shudder at the thought of depicting modern tech on screen, Park thrives in it. Under his direction, phones, texts, and FaceTime calls become tools of suspense that excitedly drive the narrative forward without surrendering an inch of the film’s electric pace.”
The innovative Park—who released his first feature The Moon Is… the Sun’s Dream over three decades ago—has always been ahead of his time. With No Other Choice (as well as his previous films Decision To Leave and The Handmaiden), the medium has finally caught up, allowing him to flex his mastery behind the camera in truly awe-inspiring form. His technical flourishes are dazzling: one highlight sees a shot of You digging a grave dissolve into his wife turning in bed, as if he is sealing her fate, too. Just one of dozens of moments that will no doubt be clipped and marveled at over and over as the film reaches cinemas and streaming services over the coming months.
Where some directors shudder at the thought of depicting modern tech on screen, Park thrives in it. Under his direction, phones, texts, and FaceTime calls become tools of suspense that excitedly drive the narrative forward without surrendering an inch of the film’s electric pace.
Yet Park’s greatest achievement here lies not in style but balance. No Other Choice blends black comedy, tense thrills, and sharp social commentary with such deftness that before you know it you are as swept up in the madness as the characters themselves. Just when you think you know where Park is taking you, he swerves, and then he swerves again. By the film’s bleak, brilliant end, it’s clear: Park Chan-wook remains a virtuoso of the form, and No Other Choice astonishes as the latest movement in his master symphony—if we’re lucky, the music will continue to play and evolve for years to come.
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