No Other Choice Review: BFI London Film Festival 2025

Lee Byung-hun gets murderous in Park Chan-wook’s latest twisted crime caper No Other Choice

Man-Soo (Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun) lives a very comfortable life with his wife Mi-Ri (Son Ye-jin) their two children and their two dogs, afforded by Man-Soo’s 25-year service as a manager in a paper manufacturing company. When he is abruptly laid off, he tells his family not to panic and assures them he will find a new job within 3 months. But over 18 months pass and Man-Soo is still unemployed, with huge debts racking up. Convinced he can only work in the paper industry, he refuses to take other jobs even as the bank threatens to foreclose on their house.

Man-Soo finally finds what seems to be the perfect job, and interviews for a position at a rival company to his old one, Moon Paper. The interview does not go well and Man-Soo is absolutely humiliated in the boardroom. Convinced he is perfect for the job even if the bosses couldn’t see it, he comes up with a mad capped plan to brutally eliminate all of the other candidates. Once he is the last man standing the company will have no choice but to hire him.

No Other Choice is the latest film from South Korean master Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) and has all the hallmarks we’ve come to expect from a Park film; crime, twisted moralities, violence, gore and dark humour. While his last work before this, Decision To Leave, felt like a classy tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, No Other Choice is his funniest film yet, masterfully weaving tones to combine both the shock factor of some of his early work with genuinely hilarious comedy set pieces.

Lee leads marvellously as a reluctant criminal, desperately worried about failing his family and pushed to a point where he truly believes he has no other choice than to kill. He and his fellow paper company men have been moulded by a toxic work culture, so rigidly committed to the path they’ve chosen in life that think they can’t possibly do anything else. As we see time and time again, people who are unable to bend will break – it’s just that this break comes in the form of a murder spree. While we as outside observers can see that yes, there were plenty of other choices, his thought process absolutely makes sense in the twisted narrative of this world.

Park Chan-wook once again proves himself to be a technical genius. No Other Choice is beautifully composed, each scene and shot stylishly framed and clearly carefully thought out. Transitions are playful and inventive – it feels like there’s no other filmmaker on earth having as much fun with the camera as this, creating pictures that manage to be so elegant and beautiful while being about such depraved subjects.

The pace zips along, and while No Other Choice runs at nearly two and a half hours long there’s no point where it drags. Tension neatly ratchets up as we watch Man-Soo slowly evolve from reluctant, bumbling criminal to cunning hitman; even if he never becomes truly cold and confident. There’s time for diversions into fun b-plots involving his son’s attempts to earn money, and his wife’s concerningly attractive boss (a dentist who may or may not be named Dr. Ouch) and it never feels like we’re losing the central thread of the story. Each narrative is given precisely the right amount of weight.

While there are still some shocking scenes it’s far more palatable than some of the extreme violence seen in Park’s early work (hey – only one tooth gets visibly ripped out, and no one gets stabbed with a clawhammer in this one.) The dark humour with which the violence is approached means that No Other Choice is probably his most accessible film for an average audience – and if you’re already a Park Chan-wook superfan, as I am, then you won’t be disappointed.

No Other Choice is an outrageously good time in the cinema, powered by a hilariously droll performance from Lee Byung-hun and put together by one of the true genius storytellers of world cinema. Funny, dark, twisted, gross and somehow still beautiful to look at, it’s everything you could want from a Park Chan-wook movie.

No Other Choice is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released in UK cinemas in January 2026

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