Director Park Chan-wook‘s No Other Choice (Eojjeolsugaeopda), a satirical dark comedy thriller based on Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, had its world premiere in the main competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. The film garnered significant critical attention, receiving a nine-minute standing ovation on the Lido and later going on to win the inaugural International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. It has since been selected as South Korea’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars.
Set in Busan, South Korea, the script immediately establishes the perfect, albeit precarious, domestic world of Yoo Man-soo (Lee) and his proud wife, Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), and their two children. The film opens with a deceptively serene scene: Yoo is happily barbecuing an eel, a supposed gift for his hard work at the factory — unaware that it is, in fact, a severance gift.
Yoo, an award-winning paper factory manager, is abruptly laid off with his colleagues, marking the beginning of his devastating decline. In a moment of false bravado at a group counseling session, the once-proud father declares an optimistic, yet fatally flawed, “In three months, I’ll get hired again! I feel great!” This declaration is a key turning point, setting into motion the dangerous and morally corrupt oath he takes to reclaim his respect and status as a provider.
The screenplay efficiently charts Yoo’s humiliating and accelerating financial ruin. Months later, he’s reduced to working at a grocery store. A prospective job interview — one where he fails to answer the seemingly innocuous question, “What is your weakness” — underscores his deep-seated inability to adapt or self-reflect. The material challenges pile up: escalating mortgage bills, downgrading their car, a persistent toothache that mirrors his internal rot, and the devastating notice of an impending foreclosure on his childhood home.
In desperation, Yoo hatches a chilling yet darkly logical plan. He posts a job advertisement for a fictitious paper company to solicit résumés from his former colleagues and industry rivals. He then systematically targets and murders the qualified candidates, attempting to destroy the competition and increase his own negligible chance of re-employment.
The script’s sharpest focus is on the theme of identity and masculine pride of unemployed men who view working in “lesser” roles as beneath them, contrasting sharply with the stress and practical sacrifices endured by their wives and families. Yoo is a perfect vehicle for this satire, as his ultimate act of violence is driven not by necessity but rather a pathological need to maintain an image of success.
The film’s title is derived from a key scene where Yoo uses the tapping method (a coping technique taught in his counseling sessions), repeating the phrase “no other choice” as a warped mantra before committing one of his calculated murders. This brilliantly encapsulates the dark irony: his actions are not a last resort but a grotesque consequence of his own inability to accept reality or compromise his ego.
Park was fascinated by the novel’s core psychological mechanism: the process by which an “ordinary person who was perfectly normal, ends up like this in a social system.” He notes that the victims Yoo targets are essentially his alter egos — men facing the same existential crisis. He highlights the irony that Yoo doesn’t target the company or the capitalist system that wronged him, but instead goes for those who are equally as pitiful as he is.
Read the screenplay below.
