Venice: Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice...

NO OTHER CHOICE

In 2005, Costa-Gavras adapted Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax into Le Couperet, a stark meditation on the cruelty and dehumanization embedded in the modern workplace. Nearly two decades later, Park Chan-wook returns to the same source material with No Other Choice, dedicating the film to Gavras, and in doing so asserting himself once more as one of the most audacious and precise filmmakers alive. Here is a director capable of merging Korean cultural specificity with an elegance of cinematic form so distinctive that only he could achieve it—where narrative, composition, and moral complexity are intertwined to such an extent that a single viewing can scarcely contain their richness.

At the center is Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), head of a company producing security and specialty papers, who finds himself suddenly dispossessed of the only role matching his qualifications...

Lee Byung-Hun stars in "No Other Choice"

Unable to outmaneuver rivals for this position—and aware of other capable, unemployed men who might one day claim the same opportunities—Man-su resolves to remove, permanently, the three colleagues more competent than he. From this premise, Park constructs a moral and psychological labyrinth, tracing the protagonist’s descent into calculated ruthlessness while subtly revealing the latent humanity of those he targets. Contrary to what one might expect, these “victims” are not hollow or merely incidental; beneath the surface of men who may appear flawed, passive, or even diminished by circumstance, Park exposes their skill, integrity, and resilience, qualities that mirror Man-su himself.

The film’s tension is amplified by its exploration of gender and familial dynamics. While Man-su navigates his ethical compromises and existential anxiety, the women around him—his wife, and the wives of his would-be victims—emerge as quietly formidable figures, resourceful and imaginative in ways the men often cannot be. Their pragmatism and moral creativity contrast sharply with the patriarchs’ stasis, revealing both the fragility of traditional male identity in a society defined by work and the enduring, if understated, agency of women in moments of crisis.

Comparisons to Parasite are inevitable and, in this case, illuminating. Both films interrogate social hierarchy and the pressures of unemployment, yet Park’s approach is far more uncompromising and morally intricate. Parasite presents a poor but cunning family exploiting an oblivious wealthy household, with transgressions justified by circumstance. In No Other Choice, however, the ethical stakes are personal and existential: Man-su is already a man who has sacrificed dignity to secure stability, yet he chooses murder not from ignorance or necessity but from an obsessive desire to preserve social status, household comforts, and the cohesion of his family. Here, the question is not only who deserves survival but whether the very act of survival justifies the violation of moral law—a calculus made all the more chilling by the reflection of Man-su’s victims as his equals in skill and character.

Formally, the film is pure Park Chan-wook. Every transition, gesture, and composition is charged with intention, from painterly scene changes to darkly comic flourishes, from meticulously choreographed sequences of tension to digital cinematography that heightens color and texture for emotional precision rather than realism. The villa, a space both domestic and symbolic, becomes a locus of memory, trauma, and moral reckoning: childhood joys intersect with generational despair, and the structural elegance of the home mirrors the ethical architecture of the narrative itself.

Ultimately, No Other Choice is a study in moral compromise and human calculation. It portrays a man who negotiates his connection with others, suppressing solidarity and empathy to protect the fragile equilibrium of a family shaped by complex histories and past traumas. It is a portrait of a society in which work defines identity, where professional displacement fractures not only livelihood but selfhood, and where survival demands ethical contortions as precise and devastating as any physical maneuver. Park Chan-wook has fashioned a film that is formally assured, psychologically penetrating, and morally unflinching—a story in which every decision, every failure, and every unintended consequence resonates far beyond the surface of its plot.

Related

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Comments

[thevoid99]

Park Chan-Wook puts my ass in the seat! His last 2 feature films in The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave both topped my respective year-end lists for 2016 and 2022. He's that fucking good.