No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, 2025)

[yoloswegmaster]

NEON have picked up the rights to Park Chan-wook's 'No Other Choice', which is expected to premiere at Venice this year

[yoloswegmaster]

Teaser and Poster for No Other Choice:

[Never Cursed]

Hah, seems like someone at Neon jumped the gun a bit - the teaser is now privated!

[yoloswegmaster]

They probably meant to upload it 12 hours from now, right after it's been officially announced to be at Venice.

[Jigvell]

This was Park's passion project for a long time now. I remember reading about it back in 2010.
He really sped up the edition process since filming finished this year's January.

[brundlefly]

Teaser and Poster for No Other Choice:

Hah, seems like someone at Neon jumped the gun a bit - the teaser is now privated!

Rotten Tomatoes never took theirs down.

[brundlefly]

No Other Choice trailer.

[therewillbeblus]

After hearing some pretty negative reactions, I thought No Other Choice was absolutely hysterical and a great thematic and tonal companion piece to Parasite. Park plays things less safe - it's full of messy filmmaking: strange intrusive shot choices, odd pacing with unexpected stops-and-starts - but I think that all works to service the themes of our antihero being completely out of his element, existing in a world that no longer makes sense, with macro and micro systems crumbling before us. I've encountered complaints about its use of humor, but I don't know of a more appropriate way to tell this story. It's so absurd, and everyone involved is so inexperienced with violence that sometimes it just has to become slapstick to be effective. This is going to divide audiences unlike Parasite, due to its risk-taking and looseness, but my audience loved it and I hope it becomes more appreciated rather than rejected once the wide release hits

[bearcuborg]

Caught this in IMAX last night, and I hope others get to see it that way-it’s a feast for the eyes and the sound design is incredible.

[bearcuborg]

No Other Choice back in IMAX, one night only Dec 15th NYC/DC. Not to be missed...

[Lowry_Sam]

No Other Choice back in IMAX, one night only Dec 15th NYC/DC. Not to be missed...

Thanks for the heads up. Just did a search for other screenings & found out it's @ 100 theaters. Emeryville AMC Imax seems to be only SF bay area, but they still have seats.

[Mr Sausage]

No Other Choice is an anti-capitalist farce with plenty of visual invention and masterful filmmaking, but its farcical tone was too arch and mannered to be funny. Not helping was the thriller parts were given too little weight to be thrilling, and its plot was too diffuse to generate momentum. The film for the most part just sat there for me. Only in the last 45 minutes did I feel it pick up, but only because its (entirely conventional) turn towards the serious in the last act drained the archness from its tone, and because the tightening of the plot as it reached the finale generated momentum. I felt Parasite did this kind of thing with greater success.

[beamish14]

No Other Choice is an anti-capitalist farce with plenty of visual invention and masterful filmmaking, but its farcical tone was too arch and mannered to be funny. Not helping was the thriller parts were given too little weight to be thrilling, and its plot was too diffuse to generate momentum. The film for the most part just sat there for me. Only in the last 45 minutes did I feel it pick up, but only because its (entirely conventional) turn towards the serious in the last act drained the archness from its tone, and because the tightening of the plot as it reached the finale generated momentum. I felt Parasite did this kind of thing with greater success.

I echo your thoughts about the first act being a bit too uneven. The performances are marvelous, and I loved the support group/job separation transition specialist scenes, though. I don’t think it’s quite as successful as Costa-Gavras’ The Ax, but it mostly worked for me. Beautiful score, too.

[therewillbeblus]

This will undoubtedly be an unpopular opinion, but I preferred this to Parasite, as indicated but not outright said in my writeup

[Mr Sausage]

I have no special fondness for Parasite, but it did surprise me, and I laughed consistently.

There were some funny moments in No Other Choice ("Only two bullets!") and some ludicrous situations that worked (three people all misunderstanding the situation while unable to hear each other). But generally Park over eggs the movie. The main characters are exaggerated enough, and then Park surrounds them with even broader supporting characters. Mildly amusing conceits (the wife calling at inopportune moments) lose their charm from overuse. The thing is way too long with parts that add nothing (the children's subplots; the dentist and the dance stuff; almost everything with the first target), while more interesting avenues, like the alcoholism and the abuse, are barely touched on. And then there's the archness and fakery, which really sinks the movie.

As to the plot, it held no surprises. Which is fine so long as the thing is constantly racheting--but, again, Park includes too many subplots and too many wacky characters, so it doesn't rachet until nearly the two-hour point. There was a lot of visual interest, but it becomes kinda fatiguing when there's so much else going on. You say the film took risks, and while that might've been true in another filmmaker's hands, those risks just felt like Park's usual manner. I wished he'd taken the risk of doing a lean genre film instead.

[Red Screamer]

I’m with blus, I’m a fan of No Other Choice and found it more cohesive and unsettling than reviews led me to expect. Many responses to the film treat its comedy as simply a formal lark or Park hamming it up, but that’s not giving enough credit to how the film uses anticlimaxes and slapstick to reframe its material, refusing genre thrills by, for example, not letting characters be dehumanized (I allow myself the overserious word because dehumanization is one of the film’s main subjects) — like in letting the section with the first target go on so long, with all of its hesitations and details adding weight and difficulty to the protag’s choice — and not letting the violence ever become glamorous or satisfying. The structure is also quite smart and not as messy as it might appear, continually adding parallels and unexpected pay offs, like

Spoiler

the way each target shares different aspects of our protag’s personality/past (work obsession, fading marriage; fatherhood and pride; alcoholism and love of nature — with the method of the last murder reprising a traumatic turning point that his wife brings up) or the small moments marking developments in his marriage.

[nicolas]

4K UHD upcoming from NEON/Decal, tentatively in April and seemingly another deluxe edition like their Oldboy 4K.

[brundlefly]

The structure is also quite smart and not as messy as it might appear, continually adding parallels and unexpected pay offs, like

Spoiler

the way each target shares different aspects of our protag’s personality/past (work obsession, fading marriage; fatherhood and pride; alcoholism and love of nature — with the method of the last murder reprising a traumatic turning point that his wife brings up) or the small moments marking developments in his marriage.

This, plus.

Spoiler

Was wondering whether I was correctly feeling Park (perhaps via Westlake) weave <i>Rear Window</i> elements through a work whose plot bears little relation, or if the voyeuristic interactions and garden burial were just pulp tropes. But like Stewart’s bachelor scanning the courtyard and seeing potential relationship scenarios, Yoo Man-su is seeing the stages of his family falling apart. A close but antagonized couple where the wife has turned toward an affair; a divorced father demeaning himself to support and stay connected with his daughter; a divorcee whose obsessions have driven his wife away. The real tension is always at home.

His task gets easier as he goes along, not just because he’s getting better at what he’s doing and becoming a dehumanized tool of the system (he even pauses before committing his final, perhaps unnecessary murder to do some cost/benefit analysis), but because successive targets are more isolated. Man-su still has the advantage of one support network. (One of the currents running through this is how families absorb stresses brought home to them.) But heartbreakingly, his path involves removing another. He still bonds with each of his victims in some way, still learns from them, all while he’s hollowing himself and gutting (deforesting?) the field of colleagues who share his peculiar expertise on the way to realizing the film’s double-edged title.

It’s such sad comedy. But though it ends with a man alone in the dark laughing at a tragedy, it also shares a flare of father’s hope with PTA and One Battle After Another: Here the daughter, often unable to connect to the world, has invented her own visual language while she carries old culture on.

All good notes about the structure in this thread. There’s no denying this is an oddly shaped movie, especially one built around a basic three-part quest. I expect Park to err toward indulgence, but also agree he’s often doing so here with consideration and purpose. Even when it’s simply expressive: After some aimlessness, the movie locks into purpose as the protagonist finds one, grows more assuring as he grows assured. I found some of the comedy labored (but then this is a world that does not reward subtlety or indecision), was unsure about and exhausted by certain dangling elements (which may feel more integral on a second viewing). I understand the desire for a streamlined thriller. But I’ve also great sympathy for the inefficient, and wanting Park to pare his work toward mechanics in a movie that concerns downsizing and automation looks beside the point.

[andyli]

I like this one a lot and want to chime in to praise Son Ye-jin's portrayal of the wife. I'd been wondering why she took on acting in a Park film and how her sweet-heart image (from modern classics such as The Classic and A Moment of Remember) would fit in Park's macabre cinema. Well, she turns up with a nuanced, complex performance of a woman who is almost always left in the dark yet still plays a pivotal part in her husband's scheme ("If you did something wrong, I'm also part of it").

Spoiler

First off the character dances around but dodges most clichéd bullets of a housewife driving her husband to murder. We saw her tighten up the family budget, take on a part-time job, and even act proactively to salvage her incriminated son. Yet it seems no matter how well she does her job of being a 'decent' and supportive wife as society expects her to be, her acts still subliminally push her husband toward the mental cliff of murder. It doesn't seem she has a choice either. She cannot change her husband's perception of her. For example, she goes to work for a young male acquaintance that may or may not have romantic feelings for her (and vice versa) but did nothing out of the way, but still the husband plays up the cuckold and pegs this jealousy into his narrative of no other choice but murder. In another case she lets slip the fantasy of all other candidates conveniently disappearing, an innocuous joke, which nevertheless planted the seed in her husband's more serious mind. I could see her husband shouting to her "You gave me the idea and neglected to ask me what I was doing all these nights out there, so you're the de facto accomplice!" in her back mind. This leads her to admit to her part in the husband's wrongdoings of which she actually knows exactly nothing about. The reveal was played out by cutting between parallel actions of the husband and wife, as if they act in concertedness. But we feel the emotional center of gravity firmly on her: she is the one left to lie to her child and issue the pardon on her husband's crimes, not just to those other candidates but to the family as well. The final scene of the daughter playing the cello hits so hard on her that it leads to her collapse. This reminds me of the final scene of Margaret, a film that could not be more different from this one but shares a similar cathartic moment when a character is forced to acknowledge the disintegration of innocence and learns to live with guilt for the rest of her life.

[Never Cursed]

An extended cut of this (18 or so minutes longer) will be released on home video this year

[bearcuborg]

4k limited edition for $70!

[swo17]

Will there be no other... option?

[dwk]

They haven't said, but Neon still hasn't done a standard release of Oldboy on UHD, even though the deluxe edition sold out a long time ago.

[Monterey Jack]

The price-gouging for physical media has gotten out of control over the last five or so years. Just a decade ago, even the specialty labels like Shout Factory, Kino and Arrow would have never charged that much for a single movie unless it came with tons of "swag". I loved the movie, but I could not possibly justify spending $70 on in when that same amount of money would net me seven movies on Blu in the next Kino sale.

[Finch]

I'm not blind-buying for $70. MUBI's UK edition shouldn't be far behind though.