No Other Choice (2025) is directed by Park Chan-wook, who also wrote the screenplay alongside Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Jahye Lee. It stars Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Woo Seung Kim, So Yul Choi, Lee Sung-min, Nam Jin-bok, Park Hee-soon, Yeom Hye-ran, Kim Hyung-mook, Yoo Yeon-seok, and Cha Seung-won.

The film follows Man-su, an average South Korean family man who’s fired from his job at a paper factory after it’s bought out by an American brand. After years of failed interviews and demeaning (at least he thinks so) part-time jobs, his family’s expenses reach a breaking point. On the brink of being forced to sell their beloved home, Man-su devises a desperate plan to ensure his employment by any means necessary. With his family’s future at stake, Man-su sets out to murder his competition, believing he has NO OTHER CHOICE. 

As Man-su, Lee Byung-hun delivers one of the year’s best performances. He perfectly emulates the film’s balance of humor and darkness — his everyman imperfections believably masking his potential unspeakable cruelty. Director Park Chan-wook is sure to receive most of the credit for the film’s strict tonal command, but I don’t think it would work without Byung-hun’s performance at the center. 

Thankfully, Byung-hun isn’t the only bright spot performance-wise. As Man-su’s loving wife, Miri, Son Ye-jin gives a performance that’s naturally more subtle than her co-lead’s, but equally engaging, and arguably more complex. Miri is easily the less flashy of the two characters, but is likeably level-headed, emotionally intelligent, and respectably loyal without being a pushover. To round things out, her arc resolves in a way that’s shocking, but in hindsight, is actually clearly foreshadowed. It has all the elements of a truly well-tailored surprise, and is one of the many reasons I think the film would only improve upon a second viewing. 

The film’s exploration of AI’s tendency to eliminate employment opportunities is, no surprise, relevant to today’s day and age. However, this mostly acts as a vehicle for the film’s primary theme: human inability to adapt and/or change. Like Man-su’s reaction to the prospect of finding a new career, we often treat AI as a threat that needs to be battled and stopped, despite the fact that its future commonplace use is all but inevitable. Instead of accepting this, adapting to its use, and applying the technology in ways that benefit society, we let our fear of change/the unknown engage our animalistic, fight-or-flight survival instincts. This can even go so far that an individual will kill in order to maintain their way of life, as exemplified by Man-su. 

Yes, the film criticizes our ability to adapt and change, but it also acknowledges how employers often treat their employees as expendable tools that can be cut at any moment if it makes financial sense. They operate with cold, inhuman efficiency, but when someone like Man-su decides to approach his job hunt with a similar lack of remorse, most would be quick to consider his actions morally reprehensible. Corporations/businesses are not held to the same standards as human beings, when ideally, they should be held to a much higher standard. Heartless treatment will usually be met with an equally heartless response.

Overall, this is yet another winner from director Park Chan-wook, proving that South Korean cinema is still very much alive and well following Bong Joon-ho’s 2020 Best Picture winner, Parasite. No Other Choice is an impressive display of pitch-black humor and relevant storytelling that’s equally satisfying on both abstract and literal levels. It’s well-paced, unpredictable, and knows exactly when to commit to/push either of its opposite tones. This helps the film to avoid the common dark-comedy misstep of letting its bleakness and humor cancel each other out. I won’t tell you the direction it ultimately commits to, but it’s the correct one, if I do say so myself. If you like thought-provoking, relevant thrillers, this is a must-see in 2025. A-