As a movie year, 2025 had its ups and downs, but audiences have been spoiled for choice as we head into 2026. Avatar: Fire & Ash has all the blockbuster spectacle you could want, while Timothée Chalamet's much-hyped Marty Supreme is both zeitgeisty event and likely awards darling. Prefer comedy? You could see Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda, or take in Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried's pulpy thriller The Housemaid. And for those craving a feel-good studio drama, Song Sung Blue's got you covered.
But as these films snatch the spotlight, a true gem risks getting buried beneath them. No Other Choice, the latest project from Korean director Park Chan-wook, began its limited theatrical release on Christmas Day, and will continue to expand in the US throughout January. Despite coming in with some awards heat and plenty of critical love (to the tune of a 99% Rotten Tomatoes score), it looks to be at risk of flying under the radar, which would be a real shame. It should be considered one of the best movies of 2025.
No Other Choice Shouldn't Be Taken For Granted
Are we taking Park Chan-wook for granted? He's one of our great living filmmakers, and is arguably on the best run of his career, but his work isn't talked about quite the way that it should be. No Other Choice is a prime example. It was positioned well, premiering at Venice and going on to Toronto before continuing along the festival circuit, but was initially received more politely than ecstatically. It had to play a sleeper role to build momentum, eventually standing out in a crop of festival films that largely fizzled.
But it's deserving of far more. Its profoundly timely premise makes the movie a pretty easy sell: When a successful man loses his job and has to look for work at a brutal time, he becomes so desperate to maintain his way of life that he starts eliminating his fellow applicants. No Other Choice adapts Donald Westlake's novel The Ax and transmutes it to a Korean setting, but as with Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, international viewers will have no problem finding this tale of life under capitalism relatable.
Tonally, there isn't another film quite like it this year. It finds a satirical edge by cultivating both laugh-out-loud black comedy and involved character study, with star Lee Byung-hun tasked with toeing this delicate line. Without his performance to keep us anchored to Man-su, the film wouldn't work as well as it does. Awards pundits have him as an outside chance for a Best Actor Oscar nomination, a rarity for performers in non-English language movies, and it would be much deserved.
No Other Choice's true selling point, however, is the masterful way it's constructed. Park, once an aspiring painter, has an eye for shot composition that is all too rare these days, and part of the joy of watching his movie is taking in his often surprising choices. The creative scene transitions generate laughs by themselves, and some of the images rank among 2025's most memorable.
Like any great satire, it also builds to a gut-punch of an ending. I'd put it alongside It Was Just An Accident as one of the best movie endings of the year, and you shouldn't miss out on the opportunity to experience it on the big screen.
