Le Couperet is a Belgian-French-Spanish (2005) film. The English title of this film is The Axe.

Directed by Costa Gavras and starring José Garcia, Karin Viard and Olivier Gourmet

Olivier Gourmet

Olivier Gourmet is a Belgian actor. He won the Best Actor award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for his role in Le Fils by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. He also appeared in La Promesse, Rosetta and L'Enfant....

, Le Couperet is an adaptation of the novel The Ax by Donald E. Westlake

Donald E. Westlake

Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...

. The film follows the "hero", Bruno D. (Garcia), trying to do the right thing but having no choice than to take the wrong path.

Synopsis

The thirty-nine-year-old executive Bruno Davert has been working for fifteen years in a paper company. After a merging operation with a Romanian company, he is fired in a downsizing. While unemployed for two years, Bruno loses his self-esteem and sanity and his family loses the middle-class lifestyle without cable television, Internet and regular consumption. He concludes that there is too much competition in his sector for a few job positions and decides to literally eliminate his competitors, killing those more qualified than him.