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Written by: Donald E. Westlake (novel "The Ax"), Park Chan-wook & Lee Kyoung-mi & Don McKellar & Jahye Lee (screenplay)
Directed by: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Woo Seung Kim
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
In this Korean language film, an abrupt layoff forces a man to devise a unique plan to secure a new job: eliminate his competition.
Verdict
It's a chilling look at the shrinking job market and how desperate that makes people. Man-su resorts to reckless measures to get a job, but he's competing with several others that have also lost their jobs as capitalism eradicates the middle class. His family is losing everything, and he has to do something. It's an ill-conceived plan, but he has no other choice. The irony is that corporations cut jobs and claim the same thing while setting record profits. There's always a choice, and that's the morality of this movie. It's a well crafted movie in every facet. You could pause this anywhere and it would be a great looking image.
Watch It.
Review
Park Chan-wook is best known for Oldboi (2003) and The Handmaiden (2016).
Man-su grilles in the backyard, enjoying summer with his family. He comments how he has it all as he embraces them. It's easy to guess that's a setup.
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| Lee Byung-hun plays Man-su |
In the next scene he's at the paper company where he's been employed for twenty-five years. The company has been sold and the new owners want to cut twenty percent of the staff. Man-su tries to speak to the new American owner who dismisses him. He's devastated when he loses his job. Thirteen months later and he's had little luck, resorting to a job as a stocker. He can't find another job in paper making. His wife Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) has gotten a part time job to help, but they're cutting back on expenses. The family re-homed their dogs, and Mansu is faced with selling his childhood home in which his family lives. They assumed he'd get a job so they never adjusted their spending. You'd think they would have had that conversation sooner.
Man-su grows desperate. He's not only lost his job, but now everything for which he's worked is slowly slipping away. If he can't find a job, what will he and his family do? Man-su nearly kills Seon, a manager at a paper company, when he sees him out in a public. Man-su considered dropping a potted plant on his head. He hesitates, realizing that to get Seon's job, he needs to be the best candidate. Man-su roots out the other candidates, putting an ad out for a paper company job. With the information of the best qualified candidates, he begins spying on them with the intent to murder the competition. In the course of a stake out, he's bitten by a snake where he's helped by that candidate Beom's wife. What a situation. It's comical how convoluted it gets. He inadvertently discovers Beom's wife is having an affair, and Man-su can't figure out how to extricate himself from that tangle.
Then you have this next step of his plan being murder. It's madness, but at the same time we're living in a world where AI will take our jobs, prices for everything keep going up, and it just seems hopeless at times. This movie captures that feeling of despair. What choice do you have but try to save your house and family by any means necessary? Man-su's life falls apart as he pursues this gambit of getting a job. Mi-ri wonders about all the secrets as he spends his time observing his victims.
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| Lee Byung-hun plays Man-su |
It's visually striking. This is a movie you could pause at any moment and it would be an amazing photograph.
I can't help but think of the relentlessness of capitalism. Inhumanely acquiring business and then squeezing them for any cent of profit at the expense of employees. The C level employees need a vacation home and that comes at the expense of the factory workers' homes, families, and entire livelihoods. Capitalism is ruining business so the rich can get richer and the middle class lose their jobs in the progress. Short term gains are prioritized at the expense of the future.
Man-su did this because he had no other choice, he also had no experience in such crimes. He shouldn't have been able to evade the police, but a confluence of events ensured just that. He gets the job, but he's the only human in an automated factory. While he's not the only one facing a shrinking job market, he did save his family and livelihood.
Is Man-su's elimination of the competition any more ruthless than corporation that will do anything for a dollar? Man-su would claim he had no choice, that had to support his family. Corporations would claim they had no choice, they needed to provide a profit to share holders. Firing people, giving them the ax, could very well lead to death; certainly the loss of their economic standing.
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| Title Card |
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