No Other Choice (2025)

It is only February, so other films may well surpass “No Other Choice”, but I think this is the best film I’ve seen so far this year. And that surprises me, because, it is a subtitled film and while I am pretentious enough to choose to watch foreign-language films, I was also very tired and that was an extra commitment from me. But more importantly, let me warn you, this film is gruesome and violent. There were times I had to turn away from the screen to avoid the worst of it (including some self-inflicted dentistry).

And yet, I’m going to recommend it.

“No Other Choice” is a dark comedy about the hyper-capitalism that is leaving many of us breathless, tired, angry and inert. It follows the fortune of Man-Su, an award-winning long-term employee of Solar Paper. He is proud of his work and looks out for his colleagues. None of this matters when the Korean company is bought out by an American venture capitalist who “down-size”, firing many of the staff including Man-Su. They have ‘no other choice’, they say.

Man-Su has family responsibilities: his wife, Lee Mi-ri, and two children, Si-one, Mi-ri’s teenage son from a previous relationship, Ri-one their daughter, a selectively-mute genius cello-player and two golden retrievers that mean the world to Ri-one. After the redundancy money has run out, Man-Su still hasn’t found a comparable job and is about to lose his house and all that it stands for as a home, a testament to his hard work and success. He feels he has ‘no other choice’, as he stands on a rooftop ready to drop a pot plant onto Seon-Chul – a manager of a paper mill. However, in that moment he realises that killing Seon-Chui will only benefit him, if he is the best candidate for the job. Through a fake advertisement he works out who his main competitors are, and the inept killing spree begins.

“No Other Choice” is about the dubious morality of a system that lets talent, loyalty and qualifications fall by the wayside to be replaced by machines. While it is easy to blame ‘the system’, the choices are still made by human beings. We do have choices. We don’t have to consume. We don’t have to compete. We don’t have to become killers. But of course, those choices are complicated by the need to be a provider, by having children, especially a neuro-divergent child who, without her expensive cello and teacher, may never find a means to living independently. So, a parent has few choices within a system that would otherwise write her off. But let’s not forget a system is populated by people. It is people who make the choices and the policy decisions and the resource allocation and the voting for representatives and the reading of media. I’m going off point, but basically, we have choices, but they are caught up in other people’s choices, our own insecurities, our own vulnerabilities and the worship of greed.

Man-Su falls to his knees, begging:

My Wife cancelled Netflix.

Because amidst the messages abut the curtailment of our humanity, the film is funny. Some of the humour is slap-stick. Sometimes it is angry. Sometimes it is gruesome. Sometimes it is a gentle satire of the ‘wellness' messages we receive as our lives fall apart. And the stakes for Man-Su keep rising.

It is also beautifully shot. The collaboration of director, Park Chan-Wook and cinematographer, Kim Woo-hyung, has produced a melding of close-ups, surreality, nature and industry-scapes. It is art.

It is an art that captured my current panic; the idea that I will never be enough, earn enough, stay principled amidst the waves of immorality, that my human skills will be replaced. And it made those fears universal and singularly bizarre.

It would be crass to reduce the complexity of “No Other Choice” to the cheap argument that “yes we do have choices”, because it recognises that we are gloriously and humanly flawed. But if you do have the time and the choice – go and see this film.

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