The latest film from Park Chan-wook, the auteur behind the kinetic Oldboy and sumptuous Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, is an adaptation of No Other Choice, based on Donald E. Westlake’s broad, bleakly capitalist novel The Ax, about the dark side of corporate downsizing, where the protagonist seeks to off his competition while fighting to re-secure his employment. Westlake’s narrative—of a paper mill executive who has been laid off, only to find himself in a literal war with others to hold onto one of the few and rapidly disappearing jobs available to apply for—is ripe for examination of broader topics such as globalization, automation, the decline of the nuclear family, and the ravages of a system designed to make the rich richer at the expense of the human chattel that traditionally grease the gears of modern society. It’s also a tale primed for the blackest of comic moments, as the hapless protagonist attempts to extinguish the competition just to keep his middle-class life intact.
This dire look at fighting for diminishing opportunities hits a little close to home, even as Park migrates the story to South Korea, and adds significant weight to the film using everything from the history of Japanese-Korean relations, the changing norms of the family unit, the expectations of the success of one’s children, and the feeling of deep connection to one’s mode of employment. With all this, the ingredients are very much in place for an acidic take on the underbelly of a social and economic system that wields loyalty as a weapon.
Le Byung-hun plays You Man-soo, the hapless victim of managerial malfeasance. Living a comfortable life in one of his childhood homes, he has all the markers of success before the hammer falls. His wife Lee Miri (Son Ye-jin) plays tennis while caring for her son from another marriage and their daughter, a cello prodigy who has little to say. Along with their two bounding dogs, they’re the perfect picture of success.
Emasculated by his firing, and failing to live up to promises to get a new job in the cutthroat world of paper products, You finds himself stocking products at a grocery store. While the bills pile up at home, he conjures a clever if diabolical plan: He founds a fake company and solicits résumés from others from his industry who have also been made redundant. He then grades their capabilities against his own, and settles on three candidates with superior experience and skills—making them not simply professional competitors, but enemies to eliminate.
Once this is established, No Other Choice veers into its most bleakly comical, like if an episode of The Office culminated in Jim turning into a serial killer. The actual execution of the executions involves one catastrophe over another. Brandishing a North Korean gun literally ripped from the hands of a dead man, You goes on a manic rampage, stalking his victims and luring them to their doom. The tone takes giant shifts, veering from slapstick humor to brutal violence, which the film never manages to pull off. It becomes a question of half measures, with the horror never so impactful that we lose sympathy for the protagonist, and the comedy never so sharp that it bleeds. Add in the 139-minute running time, and it all feels too bloated to sustain either tension or a sense of sardonic glee.
Part of Park’s directorial gift has long been his ability to deftly navigate these kinds of tonal divides, just as co-writer Don McKellar’s self-deprecating humor added an injection of wit to the pair’s take on The Sympathizer. But the script—written with Park’s previous collaborators Lee Kyoung-me and Lee Ja-hye—is too scattershot to fully embrace both the surrealism and sadism of its narrative. Even the well-telegraphed ending lacks a bit of the gut-punch one may expect from such social commentary, leaving the lingering sense that the film’s insights simply didn’t cut deeply enough to expose bone. No Other Choice ends up a laudable mixed bag, a lot of morbid fun with committed performances and beautiful composition that meanders long enough that its rage peters out.
Director: Park Chan-wook
Writer: Park Chan-wook, Don McKellar, Lee Kyoung-mi, Lee Ja-hye
Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won
Release Date: September 5, 2025 (TIFF)
