I know what it feels like to be laid off. Six months of my life were spent sending résumés into the void, waking up every morning with the same dull ache of uselessness. At a certain point, unemployment isn’t just about money. It seeps into your identity. You start to believe that everyone around you sees you as a failure, and even something as small as canceling a streaming subscription feels like an admission that you’re slipping out of the world.

That personal sting is why No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook’s latest film, hit me harder than I expected. Having its North American premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival, the film is an absurdist black comedy that spirals into horror, one that uses murder as a metaphor for the desperation of modern unemployment. Adapted from Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, it’s a story of a man who can’t let go of his career, or the idea that his worth is defined by it.

Lee Byung-hun stars as Man-soo, a middle-aged paper company employee whose 25 years of service are rewarded with a pink slip. He’s not just angry; he’s humiliated. His family is counting on him, the mortgage is closing in, and he cannot imagine a future that doesn’t involve doing exactly what he has always done. Instead of reinventing himself, he begins to identify the people standing in his way of getting hired again and then, one by one, removes them.

On paper, this could play like a grim thriller. In Park’s hands, it’s far stranger and more exhilarating. No Other Choice is kinetic, messy, and deliberately overwhelming. The film swings from razor-sharp satire to slapstick humor to operatic violence in a matter of moments. Leaning into his signature tools—match cuts, ironic visual juxtapositions, bursts of biting comedy—he lets the chaos breathe. At times, the movie feels like it’s bursting at the seams, as if Park wants us to feel the same unrelenting pressure crushing Man-soo.

Image via Cinetic Media

Lee Byung-hun delivers what may be a career-best performance. He plays Man-soo as both pathetic and terrifying, managing to maintain a sliver of humanity even as his actions become monstrous. It’s a role that demands constant recalibration: one moment, he’s a schlubby everyman cracking self-pitying jokes; the next, he’s a calculating predator. Without Lee’s ability to thread those extremes together, the film could have collapsed into caricature. Instead, he grounds it in something disturbingly real.

Visually, No Other Choice is one of Park’s most striking works, shaped by cinematographer Kim Ji-yong, who last collaborated with him on Decision to Leave in 2022. The imagery of paper, wood, and trees becomes a haunting motif, both a nod to Man-soo’s profession and a metaphor for the fragility of his identity. The production design makes his home feel like a crumbling fortress, not unlike the man himself. Park has always been a stylist, but here Kim’s precise, dynamic camerawork ensures the excess serves the story, pushing the satire into surreal territory while keeping humanity intact.

Still, the film isn’t without indulgence. At over two hours, it occasionally lingers too long on narrative detours, and not every joke lands as sharply as it should. But that looseness feels intentional, part of the film’s tonal whiplash. Park is less interested in a tidy thriller than in a messy, lived-in portrait of collapse. The result is thrilling, even when it teeters on the edge of excess.

What struck me most is how No Other Choice captures the absurdity of unemployment with almost painful accuracy. The dark joke at the center of the film is that it’s easier for Man-soo to murder his competition than to accept a life outside his narrow idea of success. It’s a satire of capitalism’s corrosive power, how a system that defines us by our ability to provide can push people to unthinkable extremes. Watching the film at TIFF, I found myself laughing, wincing, and, occasionally, nodding along with uncomfortable recognition.

In the end, No Other Choice feels like Park Chan-wook’s wildest and most unrestrained film since Oldboy (2003). It won’t be for everyone—the tonal swings are jarring, and the humor is pitch-black— but it’s undeniably alive. Park is having fun here, and that energy pulses through every frame. For me, it wasn’t just another Park Chan-wook spectacle. It was a mirror held up to the humiliations and absurdities of modern unemployment, an all too familiar story.

Review Courtesy of Jake Fittipaldi

Feature Image Courtesy of TIFF