NO OTHER CHOICE
(director/writer: Park Chan-Wook; screenwriters: based on the novel The Ax by Donald Westlake, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee, Don McKellar; cinematographer: Kim Woo-hyung; editors: Kim Sang-beom, Kim Ho-bin; music: Che Young-wuk; cast: Lee Byung-hun (You Man-soo), Lee Sung-min (Gu Bummo), Yeom Hye-ran (Ara), Cha Seung-won (Go Si-jo), Son Ye-jin (Mi-Ri), Park Hee Soon (Choi Seon-chul, rival paper company), Lee Sung Min (Gu Bummo), Yeom Hye Ran (Lee Ara), Cha Seung Won (Go Si-jo), Yoo Yeon-seok (dentist, Oh-Chin-ho), Choi So Yul (Ri-one), Kim Woo Seung (Si-one), Oh Dal Soo (Detective), Lee Suk Hyeong (Detective): NR; producers: Park Chan-Wook, Back Jisun, Michèle Ray Gavras, Alexandre Gavras; Moho Film/NEON; 2025-South Korea-in Korean, English)
“Edgy and well-crafted hilarious black comedy.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Park Chan-Wook (“The Handmaiden”/”Decision to Leave”), a master South Korean filmmaker, superbly co-writes/directs this edgy and well-crafted hilarious black comedy, that’s co-written with Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee, and the Canadian director Don McKellar. It’s based on the 1997 American novel The Ax by Donald Westlake. The subversive film’s a provocative satire on American employment ways in a South Korean setting. Costa-Gavras, the great director of “Z,” to whom the film is dedicated, filmed it in 2005 in France.
When Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun, Squid Games’ Front Man), a respected veteran manager of 25 years at a paper company is fired during a corporate takeover by an American company downsizing, he feels like he lost his manhood and is angered he can no longer afford his bourgeois suburban life-style (no more tennis lessons for his wife or Netflix for the kids). The decent guy can’t find another job after his 3 months of severance pay is up. When applying for a job is mocked by a rival paper company boss (Park Hee Soon), someone who previously worked under him, he has a personality change and schemes to kill any candidates for his position he deems to have better qualifications. He finds the candidates by setting up a dummy company on a website with him as the boss asking for resumes. He also realizes he has no choice but to sell his lovely memory-filled house (his childhood home that was sold but he bought back) that the bank forecloses on when he fails to pay his mortgage. He will now have to live in an apartment.
Man-soo is married to the supportive Miri (Son Ye-jin), who takes a job as a dental hygienist to help meet the expenses. But he’s jealous her handsome dentist boss (Yoo Yeon-seok) has his eye on her. The family consists of her teen son (Kim Woo Seung) from a previous marriage that he accepts as his own, their cello prodigy young daughter (Choi So Yul), and their two golden retrievers.
The inept killer, Man-soo, chooses to kill his rivals to ease the pain from his loss, but absurdly messes up killing the two whose resumes indicate they’re more qualified than him.
It played at the Venice Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 9/19/2025 GRADE: A
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