No Other Choice

The middle class fears nothing so much as losing what it has: work, status, security. In cinema that fear has long driven great social dramas, from Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” to Radu Jude’s “Kontinental ’25”. Park Chan-wook turns to it too in “No Other Choice”. He adapts Donald E. Westlake’s novel “The Axe”, once filmed by Costa-Gavras — but transplants the story into the hypermodern working world of South Korea, a country that vibrates like few others between the pressure to succeed and digital upheaval.

Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) has been a paper specialist for 25 years. But when his factory switches to AI automation he loses everything overnight: job, status, self-worth. What begins as a social study soon tips into the terrain Park commands best — the thriller as moral battlefield. Man-su devises a plan to murder everyone competing for a new position, since one rival fewer means one chance more.

Park Chan-wook stages this macabre career strategy with crystal-clear images and grotesque humour. As in his revenge trilogy, he asks after guilt and honour — this time mirrored in an unleashed labour market. “No Other Choice” is more than a contribution to South Korean social cinema: it is a bitterly funny allegory of hypercapitalism, in which patriarchal expectation and neoliberal logic work hand in hand. After “Decision to Leave” (shown at 14 Films in 2022), the next great achievement from the exceptional Park Chan-wook.

Shown at the 2025 edition of Around the World in 14 Films, Berlin.

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