Stream It Or Skip It: ‘No Other Choice’ on VOD, Park Chan-wook’s Brutally Funny Indictment of Modern Existence
Park Chan-wook’s exhilaratingly bonkers No Other Choice (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) adds to the primary theme of film in 2025: It was the year of bewilderment. With everything. Bewilderment with everything. E.g., the Oscars, which shut this movie out. The Korean filmmaker behind Oldboy and The Handmaiden uses his latest film – likely a masterpiece once the dust settles – to address a bevy of hardships in a modern context: Masculinity, fracturing family dynamics, the cruel corporate job force, the encroachment of AI, substance abuse, social media, mental illness, the eroding middle class and, of course, toothaches. I mean, NOTHING’s worse than a toothache, right? And few films in 2025 were better than No Other Choice.
The Gist: Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) once was Pulp Man of the Year. Again: PULP MAN OF THE YEAR. Can you say that? No you can’t. The honor is such that only a select few can. Didn’t stop him from getting his ass canned, though. What a f—ing world, right? He worked at Solar Paper for decades, overseeing operations in the factory. We see him prior to his firing, outside his beloved home – it’s been in his family for generations now – with the greenhouse he built, grilling out for his family. His wife and kids come in for a group hug, and the two dogs worm their way in too. Welcome to almost upper-middle-class Idyll City, population six. “I’ve got it all,” Man-su crows.
As some asshole once said, though: famous last words. Solar Paper was consumed by an American company. Man-su could’ve stayed but his first task was to give the new overlords a list of people to be downsized. He protests, with a speech he practiced and practiced but now slides out like a whimper from a dying worm. They barely listen. Then they fire him. “No other choice,” is the thing the cretinous anonymous American says to him. Man-su insists he’ll get a new paper-related job in the next three months before his severance runs out, no problem. His wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), says they’ll be fine. Time passes. They’re not fine. She gets a job as a dental assistant and budgets some cuts: Cheaper cars, her parents will take the dogs, maybe they’ll have to sell the house (the biggest jerk Man-su’s ever known is interested, of course) and they even – dum-dum-tadummmmm – cancel Netflix. Their young neurodivergent daughter is a cello prodigy who’s outpaced her teacher and needs a zillion-dollar instrument, and their teenager, Man-su’s stepson, is old enough to understand the situation but young enough to try to do something stupid to “help.”
An opening at Moon Paper finds Man-su Hindenburging the interview. Pompeii. The asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs. On his way out, Man-su’s humiliated by Moon Paper manager Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), a real f—chop who’s popular on social media and obviously has no respect for a past Pulp Man of the Year. That and a throbbing toothache that Man-su won’t get treated because the dentist who employs his wife is obviously sweet on her – ugh – make our guy think unsavory thoughts. Will he act on them, though? Why the hell are we watching if he doesn’t?
And so. Somehow, recovering alcoholic Man-su doesn’t relapse. He places an ad in a prominent paper publication targeting the paper industry. It’s bullshit. It announces a job opening and you have to send your contact through the mail because the electronic paper trail is too easy to follow – hahaha, a victory for paper! It draws out fellow Pulp Men of the Year who Man-su can kill so there’s less competition for middle-management paper wonks. Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) is one applicant, a pathetic drunk with a wife (Yeom Hye-ran) who’s a struggling actress with several screws loose and who’s also cheating on him. Another is Si-jo (Cha Seung-won), who’s stooped to selling shoes, a job that Marty Supreme doesn’t want either. And then Man-su will set his sights on Seon-chul, a sadguy divorcee, I think so there’ll be a job opening at Moon Paper soon. Brilliant! The perfect crime! A plan so crazy it just might work!
Photo: Everett Collection
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? If Parasite was the best Looney Tunes-inspired Korean satire indicting the widening gulf between the elite upper class and the gig-economy poors, then No Other Choice is the best Looney Tunes-inspired Korean satire indicting the widening gulf between the almost-upper-middle-class and the slightly-higher-than-middle-middle-class. (Note: The other films defining 2025, The Year of Bewilderment, are Weapons, The Secret Agent, One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme, which, along with No Other Choice, are all about many many many incredibly trenchant things and never ever one thing in particular.)
Performance Worth Watching: Squid Game star Lee jells perfectly with Park’s greater thematic intentions, setting the tone and finding a way to pilot a blimp through the eye of a needle by putting the pathetic in Man-su’s sympathetic. Which means you can’t help but understand why he makes terrible decisions: He lives in a terrible world.
Sex And Skin: Nothing noteworthy.
Our Take: No Other Choice is a reminder that the world’s worst serial killer is still a serial killer. Man-su is a TERRIBLE murderer. Really bad at it. More like Poop Man of the Year when it comes to slaying humans. Yet we can sort of sympathize with him, since capitalism increasingly dictates that our jobs define our sense of greater purpose. Then again, if Man-su got another job, say, collecting trash or selling sporting goods or trimming shrubbery, he could have a nice enough house and afford the ad-supported Netflix tier – but is that enough “happiness” to make him “happy”? He’s so in thrall to the idea of Pulp Manhood. If he has it, he brings home the bacon for the family, and he needs to have it. He has “no other choice” but to find a job in paper. He has paper in his bones. Paper, an industry that chews up the environment. And is shrinking. And increasingly automated by AI – which also chews up the environment.
Yes: What a world. Wait, I said that already, so: What a shitshow. How to deal with this reality, then? With bitter, angry, can’t-help-but-laugh exasperation, which Park shows in this OTT highwire act that keeps us off balance for two-and–a-half hours. And gasping, as Park shakes his head at the state of reality being such that it pushes a man into the most convolutedly desperate actions, with convolutions inside convolutions that are so utterly ridiculous, it’d make Rube Goldberg crosseyed. Life! Nothing’s easy, so why not make it harder?
We must inevitably talk about the film’s most gonzo sequence, The Oven Mitt Scene. On its own, it’s a short film loaded with grimly comic slapstick soundtracked by a Korean pop song of ’80s vintage playing at a zillion decibels. The only way it could be more ridiculous is if Daffy Duck was in it, and I’m honestly surprised he wasn’t. Every participant in this little fracas is remarkably desperate, and Park’s filmmaking is extraordinary. This and all other moments of No Other Choice coalesce into a masterwork of cinematography, shot composition, mise-en-scene, sound and editing, with performances that draw you in as they push you away as they draw you in as they push you away. You’re in, you’re out, the film grabs you by the lapels and shakes you, boppity boppity boppity, until your eyes goggle and your teeth rattle. And you’re committed to this ride because Park crafts a narrative so dense, so thematically explosive, so darkly comic, you have to watch it all go down. Have to.
Our Call: STREAM IT: You’ve got [INSERT MOVIE TITLE HERE].
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
