"No Other Choice" - Park Chan-wook Outdoes His Visual Language

South Korean filmmaker, Park Chan-wook is certainly no stranger to darkly comic satires on greed and capitalism. Korean cinema in general seems to have this subgenre figured out better than anyone, or anywhere else. There certainly isn’t a shortage of films that fit this description, and given the state of our world, the output isn’t likely to cease any time soon. But if any future ones are even half as good as No Other Choice, maybe we’ll finally be able to convince our Boomer family members of how royally they’ve messed up our future before they all croak on us. 

Veteran performer, Lee Byung-hun leads No Other Choice as a middle aged husband, and father, who after losing his job decides to start murdering the people competing for his next position. Aside from being a mental manifestation of how it feels to peruse Linkedin in 2025, the film impressively sneaks in perhaps the most outward damnation of AI we’ve gotten in a really long time. 

This is easily one of the most gorgeous looking films of the past few years. Park has shown time and time again that he loves a good cross-dissolve, but No Other Choice has at least three that are utterly unforgettable. And what makes them so, is that they happen at often completely inconsequential moments. The attention to detail, and the symbolism in each casual visual is genuinely jaw-dropping, and Park makes it all look so effortless. What’s even crazier is that it’s hard to say where it stands amongst the rest of his filmography in terms of visuals, because praise like this is par for the course with him. 

Another thing that I’ll truly never understand is how he makes such sprawling, eventful narratives that never feel bloated in the slightest. The film is a little under two and a half hours, and it accomplishes even more than a four hour epic usually would and always maintains emotionality. 2025 has been the year for tonality balancing acts, and this film ranks amongst the best. 

No Other Choice is also Park Chan-wook at his funniest. The film certainly doesn’t shy away from the seriousness of its subject matter, and the ending is far from a gut-buster, but so many jokes here brought the house down. The comedy is never one-note, either. You often have no idea that a joke is being set up in the moment, because you’re so busy laughing at one that just happened, so by the time the punch-line happens, the lack of noticeable buildup makes it all so much more rewarding. Every single performer in the film brings their A-game, but I was still so impressed by the physicality that Lee Byung-hun brings to his role. He’s throwing himself to the ground, getting hit with stuff, and just being generally abusive to his body throughout the runtime and it got significant laughs every single time. 

Comparisons to Bong Joon Ho's Parasite are already being made, and will continue to be made, and most of these comparisons are not unfounded. While No Other Choice stands more than confidently on its own two feet, there were two small areas of the film that were a little too similar to Parasite for my taste. One was plot related, and another was symbolism related, but neither lasts for very long, and they both are clearly done out of love. With how close Park and Bong Joon Ho seem to be in real life, I’m sure they giggled about it together in private. 

As someone who was just ever so slightly underwhelmed by Decision to Leave, I couldn’t have been more thrilled with No Other Choice. Park Chan-wook is one of the best filmmakers of this century, and this felt like such a return to form. It was a genuine dream come true to see the film in the environment and with the people that I did. Christmas Day cannot come soon enough.