Abruptly laid off after 25 years at the same company, a desperate man goes to extreme lengths to eliminate the competition for the job he wants. A film by Park Chan-Wook, starring Lee Byung-Hun, Son Ye-Jin, Park Hee-Soon, Lee Sung-Min, Yeom Hye-Ran, Cha Seung-Won, Oh Dal-Su, Choi So-Yul, Kim Woo-Seung, Kim Hae-Sook, and Yoo Yeon-Seok.
어쩔수가없다
NO OTHER CHOICE
Park Chan-Wook
(2025)
Directed by South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook, who co-wrote the screenplay with Lee Kyoung-mi, Lee Ja-hye, and Don McKellar, No Other Choice is a black comedy thriller adapted from Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax.
The Ax is a dark thriller by Donald E. Westlake, first published in 1997 by Mysterious Press. It centers on Burke Devore, a middle-aged paper company executive who, after 18 months of unemployment due to corporate downsizing, resorts to murdering potential job rivals to secure a position. He identifies seven competitors through fake job ads and systematically eliminates them using a WWII Luger inherited from his father. The novel was adapted into a 2005 French film titled Le Couperet (The Ax), directed by Costa-Gavras and starring José Garcia.
The film follows a middle-aged paper factory employee who, after being abruptly laid off following 25 years on the job, finds himself desperate to remain the family breadwinner. With no other options, he makes the chilling decision to eliminate his competition literally in order to secure a position at a rival paper manufacturing company.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
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A film by Park Chan-Wook, starring Lee Byung-Hun, Son Ye-Jin, Park Hee-Soon, Lee Sung-Min, Yeom Hye-Ran, Cha Seung-Won, Oh Dal-Su, Choi So-Yul, Kim Woo-Seung, Kim Hae-Sook, and Yoo Yeon-Seok.
Clocking in at 139 minutes, the film feels somewhat overlong, spending nearly 40 minutes establishing the protagonist’s backstory before gradually building tension and watching him devise an elaborate plan to eliminate his competitors. It attempts to justify his actions, but the reasoning never quite connects to the reality of the narrative, making it difficult to sympathize with him.
The protagonist literally kills a man who also has a wife and children just to get ahead.
In one particularly unsettling scene, he waits for a drunken man to regain consciousness before brutally suffocating him to death. Whether this is meant to be dark comedy is unclear, because it is rarely funny.
Interestingly, the film’s most engaging characters are two detectives assigned to investigate the missing persons cases, played by Oh Dal-su and Lee Seok-hyeong.
Their comedic timing is impeccable, making them a surprisingly fascinating duo. They eventually solve the case, but arrive at the wrong conclusion, which somehow makes it even funnier. Their screen time is brief, but every appearance is memorable.
NO OTHER CHOICE (어쩔수가없다) premiered at Biennale di Venezia in the main competition on 29 August 2025. The film was theatrically released in Korea on 24 September.
