Park Chan-wook’s Job Hunt Turns Deadly in No Other Choice Trailer

Neon drops a killer trailer for No Other Choice, as Oldboy auteur Park Chan-wook turns the job hunt into a kill-the-competition blood sport.

Job hunting is already bleak. Now imagine the other candidates start turning up dead. Neon just dropped the trailer for Park Chan-wook's new one, 'No Other Choice,' and the premise takes the idea of ruthless competition very literally.

The hook

Lee Byung-hun (I Saw the Devil) plays Yoo Man-su — you might also see it romanized as You Man-su — a devoted husband and dad who gets axed from the paper company he has given 25 years of his life. After a round of humiliating interviews and mounting panic about his family's future, he decides the cleanest path back to stability is... removing his rivals from the applicant pool. Not exactly what your career counselor would suggest, but it is a Park Chan-wook movie.

Park, pitch-black humor, and very sharp edges

The trailer leans into dark comedy and biting satire while still flashing Park's trademark precision and brutality. It's the kind of premise that is simultaneously absurd and disturbingly plausible, which is very much Park's lane.

Based on a Donald Westlake novel

'No Other Choice' adapts Donald Westlake's 1997 book 'The Ax.' In that story, a middle-management lifer is laid off from a paper company and, after a long stretch of unemployment, he identifies seven local men who could claim the job he wants and methodically eliminates them, discovering he's far better at killing than anyone should be. Park's film tracks a similar descent: a mild-mannered company man pushes past desperation into something far colder.

Stacked cast

• Lee Byung-hun as Yoo/You Man-su (I Saw the Devil)
• Son Ye-jin (A Moment to Remember)
• Park Hee-soon (My Name)
• Lee Sung-min (The Spy Gone North)
• Yeom Hye-ran (The Glory)
• Cha Seung-won (Believer 1 & 2)
• Yoo Yeon-seok (Mr. Sunshine)

Early reaction and release plan

The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival to raves, then opened in South Korea last month and delivered the biggest opening of Park Chan-wook's career. Critics at home and abroad have been into it, and the trailer proudly flashes a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Neon will open 'No Other Choice' in select theaters on Christmas Day, with a wider rollout in January.