No serious discussion of the best living film directors is complete without Park Chan-wook. From his international breakout with Oldboy through masterpieces like The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave, Park has established himself as a modern master of the thriller genre — as much as any of his films can be contained by a single genre, of course. Because while they usually contain some combination of murder, mayhem, and/or suspense, Park’s films are also bitingly funny. And his latest, No Other Choice, is no exception.
In a typically left-field choice, Park’s most recent film is based on a novel by Donald E. Westlake, the American midcentury pulp author whose work also inspired the nihilistic crime classic Point Blank (which Inverse just recommended earlier this week). The Ax was first published in 1997, and had already been adapted into a movie by the French director Costa-Gavras when Park bought the rights to the novel all the way back in 2009. With all that in mind, then, it’s ironic how perfect No Other Choice ended up being for our current dystopian late-capitalist moment.
