RUNNING ON KARMA (2003)

Whatever one’s opinion of this strange fusion of genres from Hong Kong, no one will easily forget their first viewing of Running on Karma / 大隻佬 (also known as An Intelligent Muscle Man). Making its Blu-ray debut outside Asia on the ‘Masters of Cinema’ imprint from Eureka Entertainment, it’ll no doubt attract a fresh audience, so it’s important not to sully that initial experience by giving too much away here. It’s a mind-bending mash-up of police procedural, superhero fantasy, folk horror, and spiritual journey. Gleefully subverting several conventions of mainstream movies, it wends its unpredictable way to an uncompromising finale that’s sure to surprise as much as it shocks.

We meet the two central protagonists at an illicit, and playfully explicit, male strip show. In the audience, Lee Fung Yee (Cecilia Cheung) is screaming the loudest for Biggie (Andy Lau) to remove his cash-bulging briefs, which he does, and we get a glimpse of Andy Lau in the buff. Except we don’t. There’s a good reason he’s called Biggie… the man’s a mountain of muscle with an impossibly perfect bodybuilder’s physique, courtesy of a full-body prosthetic provided by a specialist VFX team in Hollywood. From certain angles, it’s exceptionally convincing, and Lau sells it with his physical presence, skilfully ensuring that, for the most part, it moves convincingly, without too many anatomically inaccurate creases. However, it’s obviously unreal, setting the tone for the entire movie, which creates an uneasy overlap of magical realism and comic book craziness, butting up against bouts of brutality and tragedy.

In parallel action, Inspector Chung (Eddie Cheung) and his forensics team are investigating a murder where the victim has been so violently beaten that his pummelled head is partly embedded in a concrete floor. What’s more, the murderer remains at the scene, hiding in an empty catering tin that may have once contained spices. It all gets a bit ‘X Files’ as the suspect, who resembles an Indian fakir, contorts himself out of the tin that’s clearly too small to fit him in.

Turns out that Lee Fung Yee is an undercover cop and tries to arrest Biggie for indecent exposure at the illegal strip show. He manages to escape through a window and, although still naked, makes a run for it. In the near-deserted streets, he literally bumps into the Indian murderer who also gave his captors the slip. It’s a chaotic chase sequence that results in the accidental shooting of a police dog and the arrest of Biggie. As he’s restrained face down in the street, he glances sideways at the dying dog and sees a scene from the animal’s previous life as it plays out in a sepia superimposition. He then looks up to see a similar scene from a past life of Lee Fung Yee involving a Japanese soldier beheading captives.

Inspector Chung mistakenly believes that Biggie was somehow involved with the Indian fugitive and takes his frustrations out with some police brutality. Lee Fung Yee knows that Biggie had nothing to do with the weird murder and takes him into her own custody for comparatively minor misdemeanours, for which she arranges for his deportation back to mainland China, where he once served as a monk at a Buddhist temple. However, his deportation is postponed when he offers to help her track down the escaped suspect using his superpowers, which include being able to see the karmic debt carried by people from the sins of their past incarnations, but only when they are near death.

Because Japan invaded China in the 1930s and occupied it for a chunk of the 20th-century, Japanese soldiers from that era are perceived by many Chinese in much the same way as Nazis are in post-war Europe—unredeemable evil villains. So, unable to unsee his visions of Lee Fung Yee’s past life, Biggie now knows that the rookie undercover policewoman carries a considerable karmic debt that demands she die soon. It becomes clear that his real motivation for helping her with the case is to keep her alive long enough for her to balance out her karmic account with enough kindness and good deeds.

Their developing sweet and quirky relationship is handled with some subtlety, providing a thread that holds together the fractured, episodic narrative of the second act. Biggie gives up being a stripper and takes up exhibition boxing, playing the part of a man with big muscles but slow wits who repeatedly loses against inferior opponents to throw the odds. Then, partly down to Lee Fung Yee’s influence, he enters a legitimate body-building championship. He also demonstrates that he can defy gravity and, after capturing a slippery cat-burglar in a somewhat slapstick fight sequence across the rooftops, there’s a homage to Superman: The Movie (1978) as he catches Lee Fung Yee from a fatal fall and gently deposits her back onto a roof terrace. However, his job is far from done, and the third act is a complete change in mood and pace that will take the viewer on an emotional—and karmic—rollercoaster.

Now, the notion of karmic debt doesn’t appeal to me any more than the Catholic concept of original sin, but it’s an effective device for fantasy world-building. If one can’t get on board with that concept in the context of the narrative, then the whole story falls flat. Because, although there’s plenty of action, upbeat romance, some laugh-out-loud moments, and the kind of madcap nonsense fans of classic Hong Kong cinema will relish, it’s ultimately a profound Buddhist parable about accepting destiny, realising that any desire is a form of bondage, and choosing kindness over hatred.

From flashbacks, we learn that it was Biggie’s desire for vengeance that caused him to stray from the spiritual path. Some five years prior, he’d failed to save the life of Jade (Meng Zhang), a young woman who was murdered by the escaped convict, Sun Guo (He Sheng Wei). Biggie pursued the killer into the mountains but never found him. He subsequently felt unable to lead the life of a monk, so instead of working on his soul, he worked on his body as a boxer, stripper, and champion bodybuilder.

As well as being physically dynamic, Andy Lau’s performance is complex and intelligent. He’d already racked up over a hundred screen credits and was one of the biggest stars in Hong Kong cinema, gaining a score of prestigious nominations for his work on both sides of the camera and winning a handful of awards, including two for Best Actor, not to mention literally hundreds of accolades for his music career, earning him the overall title as ‘Most Awards Won by a Cantopop Male Artist’. He would go on to win many more, including ‘Best Actor’ at the Hong Kong Film Awards, the Golden Horse Film Festival, and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards for Running on Karma.

Cecilia Cheung has credited the support and generosity of her co-star for bringing out her best. The undercover disguises also allow her to play a variety of subtly different personalities. She keeps her performance surprising and vivacious as the open and honest Lee Fung Yee, providing a foil for the film’s heavier themes and darker moments. She would take home the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress and a gold medal from the Chinese Film Media Awards.

Running on Karma was an ambitious and far from safe bet for Milkyway Image, the independent production company founded by the film’s co-directors, Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai—both seasoned producers and directors. They placed considerable faith in the star power of Andy Lau and the novelty of his muscle suit, which serves a subtle narrative purpose of emphasising the difference between the corporeal and the spiritual. It also exploited the popularity of Love on a Diet (2001), in which Andy Lau starred wearing a fat suit, and the novelty of seeing him in another full-body prosthetic was an additional draw.

We learn from the informative bonus material presented on this Blu-ray release that Milkyway Image has a unique business model that has allowed them to produce some of the more experimental and unconventional movies to come out of Hong Kong cinema during and since the handover to Chinese rule in 1997. They alternate between making ‘safe’ crowd-pleasers in the comedy and romance genres, balanced with slick, but often grim crime and police procedural movies. This also allows them to take risks now and then on films that may well flop but, despite production and distribution problems due to the Asian SARS epidemic of 2002, Running on Karma did rather well and met a generally positive critical response.

It was nominated for a baker’s dozen of Hong Kong Film Awards, winning three, including ‘Best Film’, ‘Best Screenplay’, and ‘Best Actor’, as well as reaching the top three at the Hong Kong box office. However, although a festival favourite, it failed to secure wider international distribution, except for mainland China, where more draconian censorship removed several scenes and key plot points, rendering it unintelligible. So, this Eureka Blu-ray presenting the original uncut theatrical version with generous bonus content is a great opportunity for fans to revisit this unique film and hopefully for it to be discovered by a fresh international audience.

HONG KONG • CHINA | 2023 | 94 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | CANTONESE

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• Limited Edition [2000 copies].
• Limited Edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Time Tomorrow.
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray.
• Original Cantonese stereo audio.
• Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release.
• NEW audio commentary by East Asian film experts Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and F.J DeSanto. Apart from anyone actually involved in the movie’s production, there’s no better choice than Frank Djeng to share extensive knowledge about nearly all aspects of the film. He begins by explaining that the film’s Chinese title translates as “Big Guy has Big Wisdom” before summarising how the production came together with a core cast and crew that had worked together since meeting on television productions for Hong Kong’s TVB (電視廣播有限公司). He very usefully translates certain lines of dialogue and explains how often casual remarks are referencing Buddhist philosophies. He also provides a critical appraisal of the structure and pacing along with the expected potted biographies of the cast and crew. DeSanto asks good questions and helps to clarify a few points while slowing Djeng’s rapid delivery enough to absorb it properly.
• Alternative audio commentary by Frank Djeng. Which covers much of the same ground, but perhaps in a more rapid-fire style.
• ‘Reap the Whirlwind’—a NEW 25-minute interview with Gary Bettinson, editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema journal…. in which he places the Milkyway Image production company in the context of Hong Kong cinema during the late-20th and early-21st-centuries, stepping up to fill a void left by the demise of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest—Hong Kong’s most prolific studios—as the British handed back governance to China. He then provides an overview of the careers of Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai since their days working in television. He shares insight into some of their production methods, such as rarely using a finalised script, instead treating it as a live document, even when filming and shooting without sound, adding all dialogue and foley in post-production. He also discusses the film’s deeper meanings and its ‘reflective afterlife’ that will live on and continue to change and develop in the memory of viewers long after the end credits have rolled. He’s not wrong.
• Archival ‘Making Of’—a 19-minute featurette made in 2003. Rather poor, unrestored video quality, but worthwhile content with contributions from key cast and crew tracking the production from the initial concept. This grew out of a simple idea that came to Ka-Fai Wai while filming Love for All Seasons (2003) on location in Sichuan when they visited the stone Buddha of Leshan—an image came to mind of a big man suddenly seeming small next to giant statues of Buddha. Writer Nai-Hoi Yau discusses how the script expanded from there and how he wrote the key characters. There are also contributions from Johnnie To and, of course, Andy Lau and Cecilia Cheung, discussing their characters and the belief systems explored in the film.
• Theatrical trailer.
• A Limited Edition collector’s booklet featuring a new essay by David West of NEO magazine. A slick little booklet with a brief history of Hong Kong indie movies and a critical overview of Running on Karma, its development, production and release, places it in the context of Asian and world cinema. It’s illustrated with glossy stills from the film but lacks anything unusual or special such as production sketches, concept art, costume tests, or any behind-the-scenes photos. We know such material exists as it appears in the extras on disc and it would have been nice to see some more here, perhaps even promotional ephemera like posters and such.

Cast & Crew

directors: Johnnie To & Ka-Fai Wai.
writers: Wai Ka-fai, Yau Nai-hoi, Au Kin-yee & Yip Tin-shing.
starring: Andy Lau, Cecelia Cheung & Eddie Cheung.