Dir. Park Chan-wook
2025 | 140 mins | South Korea | Korean with English subtitles
Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon

Showing Times

• Fri 06 Feb: 5pm
• Sat 07 Feb: 7pm
• Sun 08 Feb: 3pm
• Mon 09 Feb: 5pm
• Tue 10 Feb: 5pm
• Wed 11 Feb: 8pm
• Thu 12 Feb: 5pm

Audio Described headsets available from Box Office at all screenings.

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This deliriously entertaining satire from Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave, The Handmaiden, Oldboy) follows an unemployed man who, desperate to land a coveted role, develops a ruthless plan to dispatch his competition. No Other Choice transplants The Ax, a 1997 crime thriller by Donald E. Westlake, to present-day South Korea, where seeking employment is a cutthroat business.

Man-soo (Squid Game’s Lee Byung Hun) has it all: a loving wife and kids, the beautiful woodland house where he grew up, two exceptional dogs. Then, after 25 years at Solar Paper, he’s suddenly given the axe. Desperate to save the family home and retain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, when Man-soo learns of a new position going at Moon Paper, he hatches a diabolical plan to deal with his rivals.

A chilling, effortlessly elegant state-of-the-nation story satirising workplace politics and cutthroat status-seeking, Park Chan-wook mixes wickedly absurd and chaotic set-pieces with a poignant underneath sense of the true awfulness of it all. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

BBFC Rating
Rated 15 – strong language, violence, injury detail, sex references

Venue: Studio 74, Exeter Phoenix

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