No Other Choice

Park Chan-wook delivers a witty, black comedy short that exposes the dehumanization of modern labor, blending humor and social critique in a visually precise, intelligent style. The film uses irony and paradox to highlight workplace contradictions, keeping audiences engaged while making a sharp commentary on contemporary work culture.

Despite its cleverness, the short runtime limits character and theme development, leaving some ideas only partially explored. Repetitive moments and compressed storytelling prevent the film from achieving a higher emotional or philosophical impact, keeping it just short of true brilliance.

Overall, No Other Choice is an impressive, visually polished critique of modern work that reflects Park Chan-wook's signature mastery of tone, irony, and social satire, making it a must-watch for fans of intelligent black comedy.

"Paper has fed me for 25 years. Honey, I have no other choice." Park Chan-wook, master of black comedy, definitively already a living legend, delivers yet another masterpiece. So dark, so funny. The plot takes quite a while to fully kick in. But once it does, the film is unstoppably riveting. A flawless central performance from Lee Byung-hun, and fantastic turns from the rest of the cast.🔥

Social media coaches haven't picked up on this employment strategy yet.

Finally a movie for all your jobless friends. Not only will they be entertained, they'll learn something. Just make sure they're not horticulture experts and that they don't own North Korean firearms.

Social commentary here is debatable. It doesn't really matter, though. Park Chan-wook is still endlessly creative with his material, from his camera angles to his editing.

While the opening scenes set up a thriller with a formula, you soon realize that it's comedic pathos that follows its own rhythm.

By the way, these are the effects of writing everything on your phone. Buy some notebooks once in a while.

"No Other Choice" is the latest from Korean director Park Chan-wook. I saw it in a film festival and assume it will be more widely available here in the States in the near future.

When the story begins, you see that Man-soo has a good life. He's a manager at a paper plant, has a lovely wife, two kids and lives in an amazingly lovely home. Life is good...and then one day he is fired. Being an older worker, he has a lot of difficulty finding work and later, in desperation, he comes upon the idea of killing his competition for jobs!

To say this movie is dark is an understatement! It's very darkly comical and it's certainly NOT the sort of thing you'd expect to come from Hollywood. It's very well acted, very engaging and is well worth seeing. Not for everyone, however, as it is a bit bloody and nasty, but I think the director did a good job not overwhelming the audience with gore.

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

This is no where near the best movie Park Chan-wook has made. But Chan-wook once again strikes another dark comedy thriller exploring about the modern climates of the social class system, labor force, and commentary between people, contradictions, and insanity. Chan-wook has always never shy away from dark yet hilarious approaches with the writing and tone. Throughout, Chan-wook takes liberty on bringing the atmosphere, humor, production designs, camerawork and writing to light with's it's strong ambitious direction. Each scene with the camerawork felt purposeful, the production designs, costumes, music, and sound designs are excellent, and Chan-wook's direction is brilliant and meaningful.

The character portrayed by Lee Byung-hun is interesting as both a depressed, frustrated, at times, pathetic and engaging character. Byung-hun gives one of the best performances in recent times, alongside with the other performances as well. I really enjoyed how the Byung-hun's character was portrayed and developed. As his character resonates with the modern critique of the workforce, people, and the paradox between one another. The writing is pretty great as the irony and satirical aspects explored were well-written and quite brilliant.

While I did wish some of the other characters could have been developed a little more, as a whole, Chan-wook reminds us why he is one of the master's of Korean cinema.