150 Word Review: 'No Other Choice' (2025)
Company man
If you want to understand the toll American-style capitalism is wreaking on society, then watch South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy No Other Choice. This is masterful filmmaking from Park, whose nightmarish neo-noir Old Boy rules. Lee Byung-hun is deliriously unhinged as a man who has everything, only to lose it after his paper company lays him off. Lee easily juggles despair, desperation, and hope. He’s a gifted physical comedian, too. Son Ye-jin, as his wife, is quiet and formidable, as a reluctant Lady Macbeth.
No Other Choice is a snapshot of impotence as we follow Lee and other men wrestling with cratering careers mid-life. Lee’s character eventually decides the only way to get a new job is to kill the competition. These grotesque, poorly planned murders go off the rails. The ending makes a splendidly cynical point about the future, which is already here, at least in Busan.