| RUNNING ON KARMA Daai chek liu |
 2003 –
Hong Kong / ChinaDirectors: Johnny To, Ka-Fai Wai - Reviewed by Linda
Running on Karma starts out as a nice showcase of Andy Lau's comic talents. I've mostly seen him in rather dour, straight-man roles, like as the morally troubled cop in Infernal Affairs, so it was nice to see him in a ridiculously overly-developed muscle suit (a là a realistic Hans and Franz). He plays Big, an ex-monk-turned-stripper, who also mysteriously has some sort of superhero-type powers, including the ability to crawl effortlessly up walls and across ceilings. He befriends a woman cop (Cecilia Cheung), who is hot on the tail of a slithery Indian man wanted in a brutal murder case, and is intent on helping her out. The thing is, just when you think that this case is the central spine of the story, the whole thing gets solved, and then another murderer-on-the-loose case gets investigated and solved as well. Momentum falters, and a relationship between Big and the cop seems to be going somewhere, then trails off. Then a whole new can of beans opens up, revealing Big's dark past, replete with a murdered friend, a crazy mountain man, and his ESP-like abilities to see into people's past lives (i.e. their good or bad karma). By about halfway through, the scatterbrained direction and writing had lost me, despite the many moments of wacky humor. And there ARE some very very funny moments, including a hilarious scene of Big giving chase on a small motorbike that he obviously doesn't know how to ride. Running on Karma makes the unfortunate decision to get all serious on us, and even gruesomely violent. At that point I was ready to throw in the towel. If I had, I would have left with the amusing sight of a naked bodybuilder running down a street stuck in my head, rather than the grisly vision of a main character meeting an untimely demise. |
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Who knows what the hell this movie was about? Beginning with body-builder-buff male strippers and ending with a queasily untimely beheading scenario, Running on Karma is all over the place. Not only that, but I'm assuming we were all supposed to walk away with a thoughtful meditation on the cyclical fate of karma. But instead, upon closing credits, I heard murmurs from the audience of, "Um... so WHO was the murderer? Did that person even exist? But wait... now WHO was that guy in the woods?"
