Cover A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
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Would you kill for a job? Park Chan-wook’s darkly humorous ‘No Other Choice’ confronts audiences with their own ethical limits and human nature.
There is a saying that someone is so desperate for a job they would kill for it. In the master of dark humour Park Chan-wook’s latest feature film, No Other Choice (2025), this becomes literal.
You Man-su, the loyal manager of a papermaking factory for 25 years, is laid off when the industry becomes obsolete. Within a day, he loses everything—his family home, his ability to provide for his family, his dogs and, as he laments before a potential new employer, even his Netflix account. Desperate to secure a new position, he sets out not to outcompete the other candidates but to eliminate them altogether.
Blending dark humour with visceral violence—Park’s signature duo—No Other Choice won the International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. The film has also been selected as South Korea’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. It will arrive in Hong Kong cinemas on October 16, 2025.
Above A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
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Renowned for his sardonic reflections on society and human nature—think his 2009 thriller Thirst, which explores the corrupting nature of power, or his 2003 feature Oldboy, which examines the cyclical nature of revenge—Park again wields his craft masterfully. Loosely based on the 1997 American novel The Ax by Donald Westlake, No Other Choice presents a vivid portrait of one of today’s most pressing concerns: the replacement of human labour by AI.
Although You’s motive for removing stronger candidates is far from justifiable, Park’s exaggerated storytelling highlights the absurdity and brutality of the modern survival game. If you fail to adapt and outcompete others, you will be “killed off” by reality. Appropriately, as the film reminds us, the Korean expression for being laid off translates to “having one’s head chopped off”.
Above A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
A film still from Park Chan-wook’s ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
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It is in this cutthroat landscape that You’s ethical boundaries begin to bend. He justifies his crimes by convincing himself that he has “no other choice”. Park deftly extends this motif to others around him: You’s stalwart wife covering for him to protect her family; his son resorting to theft to make amends; the failing company laying off workers to reduce costs; another labourer changing industries to sell shoes he neither likes nor understands. Each character is rendered with nuance—some provoking dry laughter, others inviting tears for their doomed fates. Whatever one’s age or station, viewers will find themselves reflected in Park’s intricately realised world.
If you are seeking fairy-tale lessons from Park’s films, you are in the wrong theatre. The director examines what humans are capable of under duress, not the moral resolutions of good triumphing over evil. In No Other Choice, there are no happy endings where the wicked are punished or the virtuous rewarded. None of the characters are wholly villains or heroes; acts of kindness go unrewarded, while cruelty is met with indifference. These are flawed, ordinary people trying to survive.
Above Park Chan-wook, the director of ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
Park Chan-wook, the director of ‘No Other Choice’ (Image: courtesy of IMDB)
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Yet Park offers a subtle, poetic warning. An apple tree devoured by insects becomes the film’s haunting metaphor for a decaying human heart. It first appears in the home of a man corrupted by power, later planted above a corpse in You’s garden. In the final act, You’s innocent daughter—perhaps the film’s lone moral centre—asks whether the bugs will make the tree rot. It is not only a question for her father, but for every viewer: at what cost would you go to get what you want?
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Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
