Film Review: NO OTHER CHOICE: Park Chan-wook’s Latest is Over-the-Top, Yet Likely To Keep Audiences Entertained Throughout [NYFF 2025]

No Other Choice Review

No Other Choice (2025) Film Review from the 63rd Annual New York Film Festival, a movie directed by Park Chan-wook, written by Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee, Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook and starring Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won, Yoo Yeon-seok, Oh Dal-su, Lee Seok-hyeong and Choi Min-sik.

No Other Choice is a bizarre and satisfying new South Korean thriller from the brilliant Park Chan-wook. All over the world, there are universal themes that we dare not speak about and this movie tackles some of those topics head-on for a brilliantly constructed, if a bit wild, dramatic thriller with touches of humor that will be a sure-fire audience pleaser for fans of the acclaimed director. This film has an intelligent, if often twisted, agenda that becomes more outlandish the more the film goes on, yet a filmmaker like Park Chan-wook knows how to keep his themes in check while fully entertaining the audience from beginning to end.

This new thriller stars the very capable Lee Byung-hun as Man-soo who works at a paper mill company and is happily married with a wife and kids. He loses his job and ends up working as a stock boy while waiting to get back into a thriving corporate environment again. Man-soo realizes his family must give up their two lovable pet dogs and, soon, he learns that he may be losing his home. No, scratch that. He will, indeed, be losing his home and the family Netflix subscription will need to be cancelled. Things get pretty bad. After all, this is the house he worked his whole life to live in. Man-soo’s professional dentist wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) may be holding things together for the family temporarily, but Man-soo needs to get back into the swing of things again and start providing the life that his family expects he can provide.

A high-profile job interview provides some embarrassing moments for Man-soo who believes his nervousness is related to his level of confidence. Moon Paper is the name of the company where one of his former colleagues, Choi Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), is employed. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and Man-soo believes he deserves to be employed in the distinguished position he so desperately yearns to obtain. There are two barriers to Man-soo getting what he deserves and they come in human form- Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) and Go Si-jo (Cha Seung-won). This sets the stage for a wild and crazy series of events that begins with Man-soo attempting to drop a plant in a heavy vase from up above on a competitor and from there, things spiral out of control in such a way that there could be no turning back. Man-soo tries to lure his competitors into a twisted game where, if things go as planned, Man-soo would reign triumphant and regain his dignity.

Yeom Hye-ran is absolutely phenomenal as Goo’s artsy wife, Lee A Ra, who is a formidable presence in the story line. Man-soo proves inept in some respects at getting what he wants and all hell breaks loose in a fashion that will entertain and delight fans of Park Chan-wook’s previous work. A painful tooth of Man-soo’s also becomes a key plot thread that makes for some of the most painfully hysterical scenes in the entire picture. One wild and crazy scene has Man-soo coming into a party his wife, Mi-ri, is attending and he ends up making some suave moves to try to win back the affections of the woman he loves who he could lose to another man if he’s not careful. There’s terrific chemistry between Man-soo and Mi-ri in this film. 

This movie is genius in some respects, especially the early scenes which include a support group Man-soo attends in order to maintain his self-worth and realize others are in the same boat he is in. Man-soo doesn’t want to be in that boat anymore and has “no other choice” but to take things up a few notches in such a way that he plays a wicked game with potentially dangerous consequences. No Other Choice is at its best in its portrayal of its two ladies on opposite sides of the spectrum, Mi-ri and Lee A Ra. Both actresses who play these roles are beyond phenomenal and run away with the film whenever they’re on screen. Lee Byung-hun carries a lot of the weight of the film on his shoulders and the ladies threaten to take some of it away from him by helping out the logic, humor and pacing of the movie in incredible ways through their performances. 

No Other Choice is not a movie unlike Parasite, but the new picture doesn’t always have the consistent fluidity the Best Picture Oscar winner, Parasite, possessed. Park Chan-wook could have bitten off more than he could chew with the new picture, but, luckily, the sheer entertainment value of the film prevents the picture from going off the rails and becoming an implausible satire. There’s some genuinely biting humor here that drives the story and it’s all very volatile in a movie that speaks volumes about the realities of the workforce in many places of the world. In the end, Man-soo ultimately gets a high-pressured life experience in which the ends may just justify the means. Well, at least for the duration of the film’s running time anyway.

Rating: 8/10

Leave your thoughts on this No Other Choice review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more New York Film Festival news can visit our New York Film Festival Page, our Film Festival Page, and our Film Festival Facebook Page.

Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page.

Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Apple News, Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Telegram, Mastodon, Flipboard, Bluesky, and Threads.