Guillermo Del Toro Endorses Korean Thriller No Other Choice For Oscars

Frankenstein‘s Guillermo del Toro just added his stamp of approval to the Korean thriller No Other Choice.

Del Toro has directed several acclaimed movies, including Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim and The Shape of Water, so he knows quality films when he sees them. His most recent project, a retelling of Frankenstein, received five nominations at the Golden Globe Awards.

Now that the Golden Globes is in the rearview mirror, the biggest awards show of the year is just two months away, and del Toro wants to make sure that No Other Choice receives recognition at the Oscars.

The filmmaker took to X to share that No Other Choice is one of his top three favorite Park Chan-wook films. “Seek it please!” he exclaimed.

No Other Choice, which stars Lee Byung-hun as an unemployed man who won’t hesitate to go to extreme (and fatal) lengths to land a job, earned an impressive 98% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, which is 13% higher than del Toro’s Frankenstein.

The film’s cast also includes Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won and Yoo Yeon-seok.

At the Golden Globes, No Other Choice was up for three awards in the categories of Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Musical or Comedy (Lee Byung-hun) and Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language. Unfortunately, One Battle After Another, Timothee Chalamet (Marty Supreme) and The Secret Agent won those respective awards.

At the Critics’ Choice Awards in early January, the movie was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film but failed to secure a win in either category.

Where No Other Choice has found success is at several film festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival and Stockholm International Film Festival.

The Oscars are coming up on March 15, with nomination voting now underway. Del Toro clearly timed his praise of No Other Choice to coincide with this next phase of the Academy Award process.

The Frankenstein director is an Academy member, so he gets to vote on the Oscar nominations. It’s possible his public shoutout of No Other Choice could influence his fellow members’ decisions when choosing the nominations.

There are 15 films that made the shortlist in the category of International Feature Film.

Along with No Other Choice, the shortlist includes Belén (Argentina), The Secret Agent (Brazil), It Was Just an Accident (France), Sound of Falling (Germany), Homebound (India), The President’s Cake (Iraq), Kokuho (Japan), All That’s Left of You (Jordan), Sentimental Value (Norway), Palestine 36 (Palestine), Sirât (Spain), Late Shift (Switzerland), Left-Handed Girl (Taiwan) and The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia).

Only five of these movies will make the final cut when the nominations are announced on January 22.

Park’s film Decision to Leave was also shortlisted for the Oscars in 2023 but was shut out of the final list of nominations. There are fewer than two weeks to go until del Toro finds out if No Other Choice lands a nomination. If that comes to pass, the filmmaker will no doubt celebrate on social media.