Gorgeously shot and packed with satire that slices deep like a paper cut, No Other Choice is Park Chan-wook at his highest level.

Mild spoilers ahead; you have the choice whether to read on or not.

Losing your job sucks, especially when it’s one that you’ve tied your whole identity to. It’ll be a shock to the system for sure. But what if we were to push the consequences of this loss to a level of grounded craziness that’ll make Doctor Strangelove envious of what an astonishingly good idea it is?

Park Chan-wook answers that aforementioned question, and then some, with his utterly brilliant No Other Choice, and the result is a morbidly hilarious cocktail, equal parts stomach-dropping tragedy and (paper) cutting satire.

Adapted from Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, No Other Choice follows long-time paper company man Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), who is happily living his best life with his beautiful wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), his teenage stepson, Si-one, and his young neurodivergent cello prodigy daughter, Ri-one. When you’re barbequing eel for lunch every second day, you’re doing quite well.

Except this life doesn’t last because Man-su is quickly laid off, along with the bulk of his company’s staff. His company has become the victim of an American corporate takeover and the layoffs are a result of “workflow efficiencies” because there was, ahem, “no other choice.” In a fiercely patriarchal society like South Korea, where masculinity is intrinsically tied to a man’s ability to provide for his family, Man-su getting laid off is a huge blow to both his pride and bank balance.

Park skewers this whole masculinity dynamic by having Man-su talk a big game about how he’ll land back on his feet, only to be begging an old contact for a job interview – not a job, a job interview – outside of a toilet in no time. We later find out that not only did Mi-ri quit her job to be a stay-at-home mum for her son and their daughter, but she was more qualified and had actually earned more than Man-su before he proposed to her and asked her to quit her career.

As Man-su’s old company holds therapy sessions for the laid-off staff as a gesture of faux-sincerity, his participation in these is akin to a man on his way to a firing squad. It’s all performative. He knows it. We know it. Plus, he’s got this bloody toothache to worry about. With the stakes set, Park pushes things down an interesting fork in the road: What would a man like this do when his desperation hits a new peak?

While Man-su takes on the occasional retail gig, he remains stubbornly focused on getting another job in the rapidly shrinking paper industry. In fact, he’s decided that his only solution is to get a job at the ascendant Moon Paper company, and the surefire way to secure it is to – checks notes – murder his three main competitors for the role so he’ll be the only hireable candidate left. Fantastic solution!

Park has a lot to say in No Other Choice, and he links everything in a logical ‘this happens, therefore this happens’ daisy chain of events. It is doubly impressive that he expresses all these ideas in arguably his funniest movie since I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK. It’s astonishingly impressive how Park balances so many contrasting tones with a level of skill that would make an Olympic athlete weep with envy, sometimes within a single scene.

In a crucial midpoint scene where Man-su is faced with making a choice that’ll push him beyond the point of no return, he is pointing his oven-glove-clad gun at a man, unsure whether to pull the trigger. He cranks up the volume to drown out the potential gunshot, resulting in Man-su and the man shouting – and misunderstanding – each other in a hilarious exchange that undercuts the seriousness of the situation. As the tension ratchets up and we see the man’s wife sneaking up on this confrontation, Man-su peels away each oven glove in a simple yet hilarious display of physical comedy that again makes what should be a pulse-rising scene into a sketch bit that Saturday Night Live wishes it could pull off.

Edgar Wright may have a sparkling reputation for delivering exposition in comedic ways, but Park is the master of visually depicting his actors’ physicality while pushing the story forward in highly enjoyable ways. Whether it’s someone chugging a drink from the POV of the glass, three people wrestling each other frantically for a gun, or seamless match cuts and transitions from two seemingly unrelated scenes, Park’s manipulation of the camera confounds me in the best possible way, like a magic trick where I don’t want to know how the magic is made.

I do have a minor quibble with the sequences leading up to this midpoint scene, as we see Man-su tripping over his own feet – literally and figuratively – several times. While it was funny the first couple of times, it began to drag the pacing down to a crawl. As entertaining as his Looney Tunes-esque antics are, we simply don’t need Man-su’s incompetence at anything that isn’t flora or paper-based to be rammed down our throats repeatedly. We got it the first time.

But that’s no ding against Lee Byung-hun’s performance, which is perhaps my favourite of 2025. It is definitely the year’s most underrated. Hollywood has pigeon-holed him as someone with intense gravitas, but his South Korean work showcases his masterful ability to do whatever is required of him. Man-su is such a convincing bumbling idiot that it makes Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson seem competent. Yet, Byung-hun brings the intensity whenever it is required.

As Man-su decides to break bad, it’s Mi-ri who takes the sensible steps to secure their family’s wellbeing. While her husband is off trying to kill people (poorly), she’s got a part-time job and has done the brutal math on what everyone has to cut down on. Bye-bye, Mi-ri’s tennis and dance lessons. Who would’ve thought that women would fare better in situations like this?

As No Other Choice reaches its climax and Man-su is seemingly either going to get caught or actually succeed in his brain-fart of a plan, Mi-ri’s arc comes into full focus as she’s recontextualised as someone who has also had ‘no other choice’ in the way her life turned out. Unlike her husband, she still has a grasp on the gravity of the situation, so she makes choices to preserve what she’s got left. It’s incredibly telling that Mi-ri never says she has “no other choice.” She adapts and responds to the obstacles. The only people who say this phrase are all men, and it’s almost fitting that almost all of them are useless.

It feels like Man-su and Mi-ri’s choices are depicted as possible paths to take, one of which is destructive with a narrow focus, while the other actually takes into account what’s important rather than mere self-worth. Ye-jin deserves all the plaudits (which, sadly, will elude her) for imbuing Mi-ri with a level of intelligence and common sense that Man-su sorely lacks.

There’s just something utterly delightful whenever Park Chan-wook goes full tilt on something. You go into each movie with an idea of what could be coming, only for things to be subverted in hilarious – and occasionally shocking – ways. No Other Choice is Park operating at the peak of his powers. You can dig into what he’s trying to do or just give yourself over to his mastery and enjoy the ride. For this movie, either choice is equally rewarding.