Korean film maestro Park Chan-wook is keeping in motion. The internationally acclaimed auteur, 60, will begin production on Saturday on his 12th feature, an adaptation of American novelist Donald Westlake’s 1996 novel The Ax. The movie, which is currently going by the working title I Can’t Help It, will star Korean screen royalty Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin, with financing and distribution coming from local studio heavyweight CJ ENM.
Westlake’s novel was previously adapted into French by Costa Gavras as the 2005 film Le Couperet (The Axe). Like its predecessor, Park’s adaptation follows a man — named Man-soo this time and played by Lee — who is abruptly laid off by the paper company where he worked tirelessly for many years. The man grows increasingly desperate in his hunt for new work, eventually resolving to kill his job competitors. Son will play the man’s wife, the warm-hearted Mi-ri.
I Can’t Help It will be Park’s first film feature since his critically lauded romantic mystery drama Decision to Leave (2022). In between big-screen projects, he co-directed the HBO miniseries The Sympathizer, based on the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, and co-starring Robert Downey Jr. Last year also saw the 20th-anniversary rerelease of his ultra-violent global breakthrough Old Boy (2003).
Park and Lee achieved early career success together with the mystery thriller Joint Security Area (2000), a landmark of Korean millennial cinema (Quentin Tarantino once described it as one of his favorite films since the 1990s). Lee has since become known as one of his country’s most versatile actors, recently achieving even greater global visibility thanks to his recurring role as the Front Man in Netflix’s Squid Game. With her bright, warm persona and wildly popular early film roles, Son became known as the “Nation’s First Love” in Korea. I Can’t Help It will mark her first time collaborating with Park.
Lee Byung-hun
Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage
Rounding out I Can’t Help It‘s cast are Lee Sung-min (The Spy Gone North) and Yeom Hye-ran (Life), who will co-star as a couple who has gone through similar unemployment travails. Park Hee-soon (The Scam) will play the paper company’s team leader, while Cha Seung-won (One Ordinary Day) appears as one of Man-soo’s job competitors. Yoo Yeon-seok (Mr. Sunshine) plays a colleague of the wife, Mi-ri.
CJ ENM has said the target release date for the film remains undecided. Park, however, is a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, held annually in May, having premiered four of his films there.
A teaser poster for I Can’t Help It released by CJ ENM earlier this week.
