La vie sans principe

Johnnie To, the Godfather of Hong Kong, is the doughtiest and arguably the only Hong Kong film auteur still safeguards the pedigree of the untainted spirit from its halcyon days, after the detrimental ramifications of the censorship battlefield with mainland Chinese policy, which put Hong Kong film industry into a retrograde quagmire, only from Johnnie To's prolific output one (especially for those who has witnessed or influenced by Hong Kong films' golden era, e.g. 1980-1997) can retrieve some salve from the bleak situation (underpins by the poignant slogan "Hong Kong Film is Dead!).

LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE has its clear-sighted objective dispassionateness, adopts 3 discrete narratives from a cop, a bank clerk and a Triad member (with tentative overlays) all converge with a parking lot homicide case, and intriguingly delineates the current situation in Hong Kong society under the background of Greece's ecumenic catastrophe, which reflects the anxiety and levity in normal citizens' mind set. A dowdy retired housewife falls prey to the callous investment chicanery, a vivid mirror image of millions of ourselves, bank system embezzles people's hard-earned savings, benefits from the (almost inclusive) profit while shunts all the risky liabilities to each account holder, a deep-rooted capitalism scourge on the modern society. Veteran actress Hang Shuen So conducts a visceral impersonation using her meager appearance as the cipher victim. Denise Ho (an out-of-the-closet lesbian singer and new actress) garnishes the office-confined monotony with her restrained tolerance and discontentment as the conscientious clerk, a subdued archetypal in the white-collar hierarchy.

Versatile actor Ching Wan Lau is the Triad minion, pious to his boss and brothers, although time changes, the Triad business are at the low ebb now, but his foolhardiness resists with a perverse tenderness, in a time when brotherhood can be easily teased as homo-erotic metonymy, his loyalty is far-fetched but resonates with the gangster nostalgia which permeates the genre's best moments (To's ELECTION 2005, 8/10 and TRIAD ELECTION 2006, 8/10 are among the swan songs), Ching Wan Lau experiments a methodological mimicry with blinking-laden vivacity in his character's naive and befuddled persistence.

The third thread germinates from Richie Ran's cop, which ruefully is the weakest link and casts a shadow to the development of the character's below-the-surface tension, the elevator incident with explosive serves the only chilly thrill of the film which feels insatiable for To's generic followers.

The ending mercifully caters for a interim reprieve to the 3 protagonists, but To seems to be as unconvincing as the audiences, the fluke (gamble) is not an elixir, the stopgap is rickety, everyone is still caught in the spiderweb and the exit sign seems too far to reach.

The long-gestating Johnnie To movie 'Life Without Principle' chooses as its theme the interminable greed of mankind, set against the backdrop of the current financial crisis. Taking almost three years for the auteur to get it off the page onto the screen, it is also his most narratively complex film since 'Election', intertwining the stories of a bank employee, a cop and two triad gangsters over the course of one fateful day when the Greek economy essentially goes 'kaput'.

Unfolding quite independently of each other at first, To requests the patience of his audience as he slowly builds up each narrative thread to flesh out the key characters. First in line is bank employee Teresa (Denise Ho), who is under pressure from the team manager to meet her sales targets for a new complex financial product before the New Year. She makes cold calls from a list of bank customers, the derision she faces enough to make one think twice about being mean to the person on the other end of the line in similar real-life situations.

The focus of this segment is Teresa's persuasion of an elderly woman (So Hang-Shuen) to invest her life savings into a high-risk fund, despite the mismatch between the investment product and the client's risk appetite. The client laments about the bank's low interest rates on deposits, and Teresa sees an opportunity to be less than scrupulous- despite her nagging conscience. This is certainly a parallel between this and our very own DBS 'High Notes 5' saga not too long ago- and To mines the realities of this sequence to highlight the pitfalls many ordinary citizens often fall into when making poorly informed investment decisions.

To also uses this segment to introduce two supporting characters- the balding loan shark Yuen (Lo Hoi-Pang) who gets robbed immediately after withdrawing five million from the bank; and the soon-to-be-married Connie (Myolie Wu) frustrated at her fiancée's reluctance at buying an apartment for investment. Yuen will figure later in the second story thread led by triad runner Panther (Lau Ching Wan) and his buddy Lung (Philip Keung), who runs an illegal business operation dabbling in Internet stock trading.

Thanks to Lau's fine turn playing the exceedingly righteous Panther with just the right balance of levity and gravity, this is easily the most colourfully entertaining segment- and because of the gangster milieu also the one which To's fans will find most familiar. Using the first half to emphasise Panther's servility as he tries to post bail for a fellow triad honcho (Eddie Cheung), To's investment in character development pays off in understanding Panther's loyalty to Lung and the extent he is willing to go to help Lung out of his financial doldrums.

The third, and perhaps least developed, story concerns Inspector Cheung (Ritchie Jen), whose dedication to his work is another reason for his fiancé Connie's frustration. Though Cheung is seen earlier crossing paths with Panther, it is Cheung's heroism saving another elderly man from committing suicide and his subsequent change in perspective that this segment is concerned with- though there Is a severely undercooked subplot involving Cheung's father's death from cancer and the fate of his young half-sister. This and the other two seemingly disparate plot threads only coalesce towards the last half hour of the film- but rest assured that To rewards your patience with a riveting conclusion that connects the various characters brilliantly, albeit with some degree of deus ex machina especially towards the end.

But beyond the plotting, To's film is also extremely meaningful as a reflection of the interconnectedness of our livelihoods with the ups and downs of the world economy. Bearing great thematic relevance and prescience, the movie paints a stark picture of how the very wellbeing of ordinary and disparate folk can be affected so drastically by something happening on a different continent. It is also not afraid to expose the flaws within the growing complexities of our financial industries, which entraps the sweat-soaked dollars and cents of good hardworking people.

If the above discourse on the film's themes isn't yet clear enough, then let us also state categorically that those looking for To's trademark shoot-em-up actioners will likely be disappointed. There is nary a shootout in sight, nor a bullet fired for that matter, but To's gamble to attempt a multi-strand narrative built around pertinent social issues (think 'Traffic', 'Crash' or even this autumn's 'Contagion') pays off handsomely- thanks also to solid acting from To's usual band of regulars and some expert editing from David Richardson. As the fruit of To's labour for the past three years, it also reaffirms his position as one of the best, if not the best, directors in Hong Kong today.

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I'll start by stating that I'm a big fan of Johnnie To; I love his gangster stuff and his way of telling stories based on ramifications of character decisions, rather than a God of Fate who seems to propel 90% of American films. You could say that it's his trade mark and partly what makes his films so intense and realistic.

Life Without Principle doesn't break this cycle - it has great characters and believable situations, but it just doesn't all come together.

The story told via three separate characters who all intersect thanks to a bag full of money, what mainly drags it down is the scenes being too long. To tries to emphasise on how money and/or greed cause so many problems, and in the process we're dragged through 20 minutes of dull banking set inside one small room before the story switches to focus on the real story.

The next character then runs around town trying to squeeze cash from everybody... again, hitting us with a sense of repetition that will test the patience of many a viewer. Bizarrely, Mr. Sung - the excellent villain we've come to expect from a To film - is introduced right at the end and all I could wonder was, "How different would this film have been had he been in it sooner?"

And that was the problem: too much preaching and not enough entertainment.

Written by Cheung Ka Kit, Yau Nai Hoi and Yip Tin Shing, Life Without Principle aims itself squarely at financial markets and the corrupt ecosystem at play, and spends a significant first arc in combining often heard and experienced elements into the story. Denise Ho plays Teresa, a banking relationship officer measured by her sales figures, which means the more she pushes for the sales of riskier products, the better her commission and profitability to the bank. We understand her pressure and predicament, but one's values of caution gets thrown out the window when one's job is on the line, made worse by a pushy manager. Late nights and cold calls (getting the treatment any of us will usually dish out) become the norm, and having two key customers in Lo Hoi Pang's shady money-lender, an extremely savvy investor but of course, and in So Hang Shuen's heartland elderly woman who has little knowledge of finance other than to put her money in the bank, provided that opportunity for broad contrast in customers who know how to work the bank, and those who the bank knows how to work.

You'll even come to the belief that banks everywhere provides meagre, negligible savings interest rate only to entice you to its complicated, though sexier financial instruments that scream high returns, but comes with the fine print the thickness of a phone directory and print that only an ant could read. But that won't translate well on film, so a similar element in taped conversations and going through the motion, which many of us are susceptible to, get played out instead. You can't help but to shake your head at what's put on screen as a third person witnessing how things develop, although how many of us can say we won't get tempted when actually put in the same hot seat with the promise of money being made thrown at us, that will come with a signature and a trust that the bank, a business entity that exists to make profits from anyone, anything and anywhere, has your interest at heart?

The other major arc is equally brilliant with To retaining the gangster element in his stories, with Lau Ching Wan starring as a non too bright gangster muscle, loyal to a fault and always there for his sworn brothers. His honest nature makes him the unofficial trusted treasurer of this boss, in a time where even gangsters have problems with recruiting and retaining men, who will walk off at the first signs of trouble. So much for loyalty these days, with the attitudes of the strawberry generation being felt even to the underworld.

Fans of Lau Ching Wan will undoubtedly see some shades of a popular character he played for in one of the blockbuster television series of its day involving the financial markets, especially in a build up to an ironic twist, but he also added some performing layers to his character and somehow his simpleton endears. His role here serves to highlight how even gangster have to change with the times of economic uncertainty, where knives and guns get traded off for computers and market savvy, making money through the push of a button rather than the heydays of fighting for territory and seeking one's riches through the traditional revenue pipelines of prostitution, gambling and drugs. It took quite a while to get to where it was supposed to, but as the adage goes it's never about the destination but the journey, where Lau mesmerizes with his performance in a one man tour de force, and a slew of Milkyway regulars, with the conspicuously absence of Lam Suet, surely made this arc the best of the lot, from Eddie Cheung, Felix Wong, Law Wing Cheong, and a whole lot of others springing up to lend support.

And the last arc may serve as a filler since it's the most spread out of the three, but no less satisfying, and I thought it was easily identifiable here since it speaks directly at our pursuit of economic aspiration and the incredible long hours at work we put. Ritchie Jen stars Cheung the cop whose wife Connie (Myolie Wu) desires that swanky new condominium that they can barely afford its mortgage. Living within or beyond one's means is a decision the couple has to take, although in Cheung's case, he seems to be more at home spending time at work, rather than to address his deteriorating personal life, until an incident, as always, puts things back into proper perspective.

While the narrative is presented in a non-linear fashion, the narrative is incredibly easy to follow, with each significant moment setting the pace for those that follow, or to provide the audience with the sense of "if only he/she knew", which in fact is exactly what our attitudes are in life when we sit down to analyze seemingly disparate issues, and how close they each come toward one another than we could have had imagined. Here the Greek economic crisis, something so macro and relatively far away, shows how closely inter-connected we all are in today's global village, where concerns and decisions made thousands of miles away can impact the individual man in profound ways.

Life Without Principle is a carefully crafted film that can work anywhere, but I'm glad Johnnie To got to it first, and provided one thought-provoking and gripping film that is wonderfully contemporary. Certainly one of the best films of the year, and is highly recommended. I'll probably dip into the DVD as well for its original Cantonese language track when the time comes, to view this just as it was intended.

Crime drama surrounding financial crisis's , with classic Johnnie To themes ...

------- Movie follows multiple characters (officer, bank clerk, gangster) connected to a loan shark's death . 10 million dollars are missing in the process ..

Same time officer's wife and their foster child are looking for a home in an unstable housing market.. The bank clerk is signing people up for high-risk investments that are bound to fail.. And the gangster has luck for being the bail-out service boy , sole purpose to bail other gangsters out of the trouble they cause for themselves ..

Some investigating, robberies, car break-ins, funny police arrests, rose-petal daggers, stolen money femme ...... Johnnie To elements ..

7/10