When Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) loses his job as a paper mill line manager due to a corporate takeover he assures his family that he will find a new job in three months. Cut to 13 months later and he has seemingly part time work only in a local business moving boxes. His wife Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) decides to take charge and everyone has to cut back on activities; they will sell the house and move into an apartment and get rid of their dogs. Yoo Man-su disagrees with this and decides there is only one course of action available, he is left with no other choice.

The part about the job search felt very real, I applied for 1600 jobs in six months and could only get a part time role even after several years in the field. Yoo Man-su is determined to get work in the same field and is not open to other offers. I had five different categories of job I was applying for and did 100 applications per week.

What he eventually settles on is making a fake job and burning all the applications that don’t meet the criteria (sounds pretty real so far), then he will get rid of the people he feels are better than him so he will get the job he wants.

It’s one thing saying what you are going to do, actually doing it is another. Yoo Man-su finds he is too squeamish to actually look at the person when pulling the trigger and there is a further fly in the ointment for other reasons. I wouldn’t have thought scenes about an attempted murder would be so funny it was all very Cohen Brothers type stuff.

There are obviously no crime podcasts in this universe as nobody takes up the case apart from some police who seem like they are not really interested in actually getting a breakthrough. Yoo Man-su hiding it from his own family is a lot harder and they all end up being affected by it in one way or another.

Park Chan-wook said he wanted to show “the pain of violence” in his movies but people have misinterpreted it as “cool” like in Oldboy. There is the social commentary aspect of this movie and status anxiety that it shares with movies such as Parasite which also had the college educated applicants applying for so called “lowly” jobs.

No fault with the cast here, Lee Byung-hun was most recently in Squid Game as the big bad and a bunch of other movies like I Saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life and even Joint Security Area back in 2000. I didn’t recognise any other of the actors as being in Park Chan-wook’s regular cast. Song Kang Ho must have been busy at the time. If you watch a lot of South Korean movies and TV shows you will recognise more of the cast. It really does make a difference when the government supports the arts and has a local content quota in law.

I have no trouble recommending this one but it may not be for everyone. I actually was meant to be seeing this earlier but the air conditioning broke down in the theatre and I ended up seeing 28 Years Late: The Bone Temple instead and got a free ticket for another movie. If you want more straight forward action I would recommend seeing Bone Temple instead. This one takes its time to build up the story and the motivation of the main character.

Film Details:

Director: Park Chan-wook

Based on “The Ax” by Donald E. Westlake

Screenplay: Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, Lee Ja-hye

Music by Cho Young-wuk

Cinematographer: Kim Woo-hyung

Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won

Genre: Drama

Country: South Korea

Language: Korean with English subtitles

Length: 139 minutes

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKZpuG_ezvY