No Other Choice (Korean: 어쩔수가없다) is a 2025 South Korean black comedy thriller film co-written, produced, and directed by Park Chan-wook. Based on The Ax by Donald Westlake, the film stars Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, and Cha Seung-won. It is the second film adaptation of the novel, after the 2005 French-language feature The Axe directed by Costa-Gavras, to whom No Other Choice is dedicated in the closing credits. The film follows a desperate paper industry expert who decides to kill off his competition to be assured of the job he seeks to maintain his way of life.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025, where it garnered critical acclaim. At the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, it was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Lee Byung-hun). It was also selected as the South Korean entry for the Best International Feature Film category for the 98th Academy Awards, making the December shortlist, but was not nominated.
No Other Choice had its domestic premiere as the opening film of the 30th Busan International Film Festival on September 17, followed by its theatrical release in South Korea on September 24 by CJ Entertainment.
Contents
Plot
Man-su, an award-winning veteran employee at a papermaking company, lives happily in his beloved childhood home with his wife Mi-ri and their children: Si-one, Mi-ri's teenage son from a previous marriage, and Ri-one, an autistic cello prodigy. The company is bought out and a devastated Man-su is laid off after defending his fellow workers, but assures his family he will resume papermaking within three months.
Thirteen months later, Man-su has been unable to find another job in the papermaking industry. His family is forced to minimize their spending, including rehoming their two dogs with Mi-ri's parents, upsetting Ri-one, whose cello teacher recommends her for expensive advanced classes. The family considers selling their home to the parents of Si-one's friend Dong-ho, and Mi-ri takes a part-time job as a dental assistant to suave dentist Jin-ho, while Man-su endures a toothache he cannot afford to treat.
Man-su attempts to join the successful Moon Paper company, but is humiliated by manager Seon-chul. Wanting his job, Man-su nearly kills Seon-chul with a potted plant, but realises this will not matter unless he is the best candidate to replace him. Instead, Man-su uses a fake job advertisement to identify his chief competitors: Beom-mo and Si-jo. Retrieving his father's Vietnam War gun, he prepares to kill Seon-chul, Beom-mo, and Si-jo to eliminate his competition.
Spying on Beom-mo, an unemployed drunkard, Man-su is bitten by a snake and treated by Beom-mo's dissatisfied wife, A-ra, and is later unable to stop Beom-mo from discovering A-ra's infidelity. A-ra finds Man-su confronting Beom-mo at gunpoint, leading to a struggle for the gun, but A-ra shoots Beom-mo dead and Man-su escapes. He arrives late to a costumed party, where Mi-ri dances with Jin-ho instead. A-ra and her lover bury Beom-mo, but Man-su recovers the gun.
Man-su and Mi-ri accuse each other of infidelity, and she reminds him that he was a violent drunk when Si-one was very young, but they reconcile. At the shoe store where Si-jo works, Man-su recognises him as a kindred devoted father, but tricks him into staying late and feigns car trouble; when Si-jo stops to help, Man-su reluctantly shoots him and drives away with his corpse.
Si-one and Dong-ho are arrested for stealing iPhones from Dong-ho's father's store, but Man-su and Mi-ri blackmail Dong-ho's father, who used the store for his own infidelity, into having Dong-ho take the blame. Detectives question Man-su about Beom-mo and Si-jo's disappearances, having linked them as unemployed paper men. Smoking on the roof, Si-one witnesses Man-su in his greenhouse trying to dismember Si-jo's corpse with a chainsaw. Unable to do so, Man-su buries the body in his garden, alongside Si-one's stolen iPhones, and plants an apple tree.
Cast
Lee Byung-hun as Yoo Man-su, Mi-ri's husband and Si-one and Ri-one's father, who is a paper industry expert who is struggling to find employment
Son Ye-jin as Lee Mi-ri, Man-su's wife and Si-one and Ri-one's mother, who works as a dental assistant
Park Hee-soon as Choi Seon-chul, Man-su's third target and the divorced line manager of Papyrus Paper who also is an influencer on social media
Lee Sung-min as Goo Beom-mo, Man-su's first target and another paper expert who is also struggling to find a job
Yeom Hye-ran as Lee A-ra, Beom-mo's frustrated and unfaithful wife and a struggling veteran actress
Cha Seung-won as Ko Si-jo, Man-su's second target who works at a shoe store to provide for his family
Yoo Yeon-seok as Oh Jin-ho, a dentist and employer of Mi-ri
Kim Woo-seung as Si-one, Man-su and Mi-ri's teenage son
Choi So-yul as Ri-one, Man-su and Mi-ri's prodigious young daughter
Oh Dal-su as Detective #1
Lee Suk-hyeong as Detective #2
Im Tae-poong as Dong-ho, Si-one's friend
Kim Hyung-mook as Dong-ho's father
Woo Jeong-won as Dong-ho's mother
Kim Hae-sook as Ok Sang-yep
Production
Development
During the 14th Busan International Film Festival in 2009, it was announced that Park would remake Costa-Gavras's 2005 film The Axe. Park would later clarify that he had read Donald Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax upon which the film was based and decided to adapt it prior to knowing about Costa-Gavras's film. However, the project was delayed when Park received the screenplay for his 2012 film Stoker. In 2012, Park said he planned to make the film his next project but it still needed "more work on the casting and attracting investors".
During a live discussion with Costa-Gavras at the 24th Busan International Film Festival in 2019, Park told audiences that he was still working on his adaptation of Westlake's novel. The film was described by Park as a "lifetime project" and that while he hadn't begun filming it yet, he wished "to make this film as my masterpiece". Gavras, who still held the rights to the book, had helped Park to develop the project. The film was set to be an English-language picture, with Don McKellar co-writing the script alongside Park.
Park's team told The Hollywood Reporter that he was approaching the project with the intent to "strengthen the moral dilemma in this story as much as possible, and he will increase the role of protagonist's wife".
At the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Park stated that the project was still in development and followed "a heartbreaking story about a middle-aged man who lost a job, and now he needs to bring the bread to the table to feed his family. So, he struggles in the process of looking for a job in a specialized field, and he becomes a serial killer."
In March 2024, Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin were announced as the film's leads. Park and Son previously worked together in the 2016 movie The Truth Beneath, while Park collaborated with Lee on Joint Security Area (2000). Park revealed that the film would now be set in Korea.
In August 2024, Park's frequent collaborators Lee Kyoung-mi and Lee Ja-hye were also announced as writers on the project.
Filming
Principal photography began in August 2024. Filming wrapped in January 2025, lasting a total of five months.
Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack includes classical, Korean pop ballads, and American soul music. The opening credits and the first few minutes of the opening scene feature Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. "Redpepper Dragonfly" by Cho Yong-pil, "Let's Walk On" by Kim Chang-wan, and "Le badinage" by Marin Marais feature in the film.
Release
In June 2025, Neon acquired North American distribution rights to No Other Choice, with Mubi taking rights to the film in the U.K., Ireland, Latin America, Spain, Turkey, the SAARC, Australia, New Zealand and the Benelux, the latter in association with its subsidiary Cinéart. According to CJ ENM and Moho Film, the film was pre-sold to over 200 countries around the world, including North America, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan. It surpasses the pre-sale record of 192 countries held by Park Chan-wook's 2022 film Decision to Leave.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025. It had its North American premiere on September 5, 2025, at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where Lee Byung-hun received a Special Tribute Award at the TIFF Tribute Awards event. It was also screened in the Special Presentations section at the 2025 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, Sudbury, Ontario, on September 17, 2025.
It opened the 30th Busan International Film Festival on September 17, 2025, where both Lee and Son Ye-jin were honoured with the "Actors' house", a special career retrospective. Theatrical release in South Korea followed on September 24, by CJ Entertainment. The film was screened in IMAX theaters in South Korea, while in the United States, a one-night screening was held on December 8.
On October 4, 2025, No Other Choice was presented in the "Galas & Special Presentations" and "Spotlight on Korea" sections at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival. It had its US premiere at the Main Slate of 2025 New York Film Festival on October 12, 2025. On October 14, the film competed in the 58th Sitges Film Festival in the Oficial Fantàstic Competició section, vying for the various awards given in the section. It was presented in the Galas section of the 2025 BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2025, and would also be screened as a late addition to the Adelaide Film Festival on October 24, and in the Special Presentations of the 61st Chicago International Film Festival on October 25, 2025.
It was screened in the Masters section of the 2025 Stockholm International Film Festival on November 12, 2025, and in the "From the Festivals – 2025" section of the 56th International Film Festival of India in November 2025.
Reception
Box office
No Other Choice recouped its 17 billion won production budget before its release through overseas presales, making its financial success unaffected by its domestic performance.
The film was released on September 24, 2025, on 2,114 screens. It opened at the top recording 331,518 viewers on its opening day at the Korean box office. The film achieved the highest opening of all time for a film directed by Park, surpassing Decision to Leave and his highest-grossing film The Handmaiden. On September 28, it surpassed 1 million cumulative viewers in five days of its release by registering 1,042,800 cumulative audience.
As of 26 February 2026, the film has grossed $39 million worldwide, including US$19.7 million from 2,938,283 domestic admissions only in South Korea.
Critical response
After earning a nine-minute standing ovation and applause at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, The Dong-A Ilbo stated that the film left a significant mark on the Korean film industry, receiving rave reviews from international critics and media and helping to revitalize Korean cinema.
The film continued to attract critical acclaim; Variety reported that critics "have hailed No Other Choice as one of Park's most humane and mordantly funny works to date." On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 240 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Directed with pristine precision by Park Chan-wook, No Other Choice is a wickedly clever takedown of the corporate rat race that finds a perfect avatar in Lee Byung-Hun's skillfully hapless performance." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". This movie scored 7.17 out of 10 on Cine21.
Time Out rated the film 5 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a masterful work of cinema which might well be Chan-wook's masterpiece. And given this is the man who directed The Handmaiden that's saying a lot." According to Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, who rated the film 4 stars out of 5, "it may not be Park's masterpiece but it is the best film in the Venice competition so far". Reviewing it for the Financial Times, Danny Leigh sees it as a critique of capitalism, concluding "Capitalism may offer much less choice than advertised, he tells us. The future may take even that away." Eileen Jones of Jacobin praised the film's themes, writing: "atomization, the process by which we are all forced apart into terrifying isolation, so that we each wind up playing a lone hand against the impossible forces of our own creation, has rarely been illustrated with such powerful imagery and narrative clarity."
Accolades
No Other Choice was selected as the South Korean entry for the Best International Feature Film category for the 98th Academy Awards.
