No other choice

Release date (UK): 2026
| Country: South Korea, France |
Running time: 139 min
| Genres: Dark Comedy / 
Psycological thriller / Crime |
Director: Park Chan-wook |
Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Woo Seung Kim. | BBFC 15

By Jack Weir

Park Chan-wook, auteur director of Oldboy (2003) and The Handmaiden (2016), delivers a scathing critique of South Korea’s hypercompetitive job market in this black comedy thriller.


Family man Yoo Man-su, played with palpable desperation by Lee Byung-Hun of Joint Security Area (2000) and A Bittersweet Life (2005), is suddenly made redundant from his job at a paper factory. Unable to find a job and at risk of losing his home and his family, Yoo Man-su is left with no other choice than to eliminate his competition. This film’s serious themes are expertly counter-balanced by its use of gallows humour, surprising you with slapstick comedy during otherwise intense sequences.

Chan-wook uses tonal discord to make you laugh, before making you uneasy for supporting Man-su’s violent actions.
Chan-wook’s distinctive visual style soars to dizzying new heights in No Other Choice. The cinematography is investigative, probing the scene like an spying onlooker and creating a heightened sense of reality, one which mirrors Man-su’s deteriorating mental state and paranoia. The film is visually striking in its use of architecture and technology to create claustrophobic frames for characters; conveying that they are trapped in the capitalistic system of which there is no escape. The film’s editing is perfectly executed, using the rhythm of Bach and 80s South Korean hits to orchestrate the action. No Other Choice also portrays smart phones in an innovative way, using split-screens and overlays to convey information.


If you’re looking for a darkly hilarious thriller with complex social themes, you must seek out this film. You have no other choice.

Jack Weir is a graduate of Edinburgh Napier 
University’s Film BA (Hons) course.