Right now is the ideal moment for an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s unflinching 1997 novel The Ax, a sharply perceptive book that frames downsizing as a form of dehumanization. The downside? No Other Choice—the Ax adaptation the Korean master filmmaker has been waiting years to bring to life—doesn’t do justice to Westlake’s icy, incisive novel (a work that reads like a gleaming shiv). We all know films and books are distinct mediums; the joys of reading can never be perfectly replicated on screen. But sometimes, our familiarity with a book sets expectations we can’t shake. And even though Park is a brilliant director—his 2003 Oldboy is a haunting, operatic masterpiece—No Other Choice feels both too blandly observed and overly slapstick to hit its mark. It’s a missed opportunity, even if the filmmaking itself is technically skilled.
Park takes Westlake’s core premise—a laid-off paper mill executive, growing increasingly detached, systematically plans to kill the four men he sees as the top contenders for a job he believes he deserves—and tweaks it, shifting focus more to the string of lucky mishaps that let the film’s protagonist, Lee Byung-hun’s Man-su, get away with each crime. The movie opens in summer: Man-su stands at a barbecue grill in his stylish modern home’s yard, cooking eels sent as a thank-you gift from the paper mill where he worked loyally for 25 years. He’s surrounded by his wife Miri (Son Ye-jin), their children (teenage son Si-one, played by Woo Seung Kim, and younger daughter Ri-one, portrayed by So Yul Choi—who’s neurodivergent and a gifted cellist), and two fluffy, endearing golden retrievers that Ri-one adores. In this moment, secure in his middle-class, middle-aged life, Man-su feels he has everything he ever wanted.
But soon, Man-su learns the expensive eels are a cruel consolation prize: his company is firing him. Job hunting proves fruitless—his age and experience work against him. Practical Miri slashes household expenses: she sends the dogs away and suggests selling their family home (the very house Man-su grew up in, which was sold from under him once before; he’d worked hard to buy it back). Then Man-su lands an interview at a company he wants to join. Not only does it go badly, but he’s later humiliated by Park Hee-sun’s arrogant Sun-chul—a former subordinate who would have been his boss. Desperate, Man-su hatches a plan: eliminate the two main candidates for the job (gentle, sincere Sijo, a shoe salesman played by Cha Seung-won, and Bummo, a struggling, heavy-drinking engineer portrayed by Lee Sung-min) plus Sun-chul.
Man-su’s first murder attempt goes comically—too comically—awry; the second is chillingly efficient. But the over-the-top chaos of that first kill (involving mud slips, an accidental snakebite, and an angry woman with a gun, played by Yeom Hye-ran) sets the movie on a wobbly path it never recovers from. Lee—best known for Squid Game, though he also starred in Park’s 2000 breakthrough Joint Security Area—shines in the early scenes as a man unmoored by circumstance. He attends a counseling session packed with other middle-aged men in the same boat, all grappling with shame and emasculation. This is the damage capitalist greed—likely to be amplified even further by the —can do to a person.
Yet this theme is barely the focus of No Other Choice; its increasingly convoluted plot detracts from the story’s emotional weight. Lensed by Kim Woo-hyung, the film has a crisp, elegant look, and Park plays with cleverly tilted camera angles and visually sharp dissolves. But where’s the lyrical depth? Fans of Park’s work—not just Oldboy, but his beautiful, erotic reverie (2016) or the graceful 2023 neo-noir —know he’s capable of more, especially now that fake intelligence threatens the meaning of dignified human work.
In 1997, Westlake gave these lines to his narrator and protagonist Burke Devore—a decent man driven to murder by feelings of uselessness after losing his job: “The automated future was always presented as a good thing, a boon to mankind, but I remember, even as a child, wondering what was supposed to happen to the people who didn’t work at the dull stupefying jobs any more. They’d have to work somewhere, wouldn’t they? Or how would they eat? If the machines took all their jobs, what would they do to support themselves?” No Other Choice never captures the texture of Devore’s desperation, nor does it scratch the surface of Westlake’s future fears. Now that future is here, but the film doesn’t respond with anguish or even dry grim humor. Instead, it offers an overcalculated, mischievous wink. It’s not nearly enough.
