What to expect from Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice Plot, novel and film adaptation presented at Venice82

No Other Choice is the new film by Park Chan-wook, the twelfth feature in his career, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay together with Don McKellar, Lee Kyoung-mi, and Lee Ja-hye. The work marks the return to the big screen of the Korean auteur after the 2022 release of his Decision to Leave, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and follows the seven-episode TV series The Sympathizer in which he collaborated with Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. No Other Choice is also competing for a prestigious award, as it has been selected for the 82nd edition of the Venice International Film Festival. It marks a return to the festival since 2005, the year he presented Lady Vengeance starring Lee Young-ae, which won the Little Golden Lion prize.

Plot, novel, and film adaptations

For No Other Choice, the director and screenwriter draws inspiration from the novel The Ax, published in 1997 and written by Donald E. Westlake. However, this is not the first adaptation of the book. In 2005, Greek director Costa-Gavras took it on, with José Garcia and Karin Viard in the lead roles, under the title Le Couperet. The plot remains more or less the same, although the tone is very different between the two directors, each applying a distinct vision.

The story centers on the protagonist, whose name in the novel is Burke Devore (in Gavras’s French version, he becomes Bruno Davert, while in Park Chan-wook’s Korean version, he is Man-soo). The man, with a well-established career in the paper industry and a comfortable life with his wife and children, is laid off after many years of service, suddenly finding himself without a job and slipping into a depression that threatens to consume him. The protagonist’s goal is to take back control of his life, not to throw away years of marriage, and to start earning again. Yet the only way to secure a respectable position in the industry where he has always worked seems dangerous and drastic. In order to land a job at a prestigious company, he decides to eliminate the other candidates, literally.

Lee Byung-hun, from Squid Game to No Other Choice

The central theme of No Other Choice, just as in The Ax and later in Costa-Gavras’s Le Couperet, is what we are willing to do to maintain the balance of our lives and how much work defines us as people. Competition becomes an integral and violent part of the workplace, affecting every aspect of our daily lives, both public and private. The Greek director, in portraying Bruno’s murderous choice, crafted a tense thriller that was at times elegant, tragic, and despairing. For No Other Choice, its author leans into his explosive flair, into heightened irony, and into an excess that translates into cinematic choices that are at times wild and extreme.

For the occasion, he cast Lee Byung-hun in the lead role, an actor most audiences recently saw in the final season of Squid Game, Netflix’s global phenomenon where he played the key character Hwang In-ho, also known as the Front Man. In No Other Choice, the actor brings a playful streak even within the anxiety of having to find work, offering an unexpected nuance for those who have only known him through the streaming series. Alongside him appears Son Ye-jin as his wife Mi-ri. No Other Choice will be released in Italy on January 1, distributed by Lucky Red.