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Audio Format: DD 5.1 Surround, DTS Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin Subtitles: English, Chinese (T/S), Korean Region Code: ALL Year Made: 2003 Running Time: 93
Everything Happens For A Reason, Karma Dictates All Facets of life
 Biggie (ANDY LAU) earns a living by showing off his bodybuilder like body but his public stripteases get him in trouble and as he tries to escape, he accidentally foils the police's capture of a murderer. When he is befriended by a rookie cop, Yee (CECILIA CHEUNG), she discovers that beneath his macho and carefree exterior, he has the special gift of reading people's karma. Together, they use his powers to track down dangerous criminals.
As her feelings for Biggie deepen, Yee discovers that Biggie was once a Buddhist monk who left the monastery after his best friend's murder. With her death foreseen by Biggie's gift, she offers to do a meaningful deed before her death to track down the illusive killer of Biggie's best friend. Touched by this, Biggie is determined to use all his powers to change the force of Karma and Yee's destiny...
 
In the world of Hinduism and Buddhism, Karma explains the effect of how a person's action in one lifetime may determine his destiny in the next. Not unlike the law of physics that states for every action there is a reaction, Karma is also all about cause and effect.
Here, the cause is rookie cop Yee (Cecilia Cheung), who as a Japanese general in her previous life has decapitated tons of innocent civilians. Now karma is taking its course, and Yee is destined to die young.
Biggie (Andy Lau), an ex-monk, who has the gift of seeing into people's previous lives, befriends Yee and can't help but tries to save Yee from impending death traps.
 
Directed by Johnny To, who also directed the latest hit Turn Left Turn Right, Running On Karma showcases the wide range of To's directing talents. Fighting sequence are crisp and fluid, memory recalls are weaved seamlessly with the present.
Running On Karma took off like a typical detective movie for the first 30 minutes. It turns into romantic comedy by the hour mark, and transforms again into a surreal horror film into the final stretch. Just as the muscular body suit does not sit well on the otherwise lean Andy Lau, the film's multi-facet plot does not gel at all.
 The singer actor Lau once lamented, unlike his illustrated singing career he still lacks recognition in the acting department. But should he continues to pick such script and character, he will not be nominated any time soon come the next Golden Horse Award. For those who have seen him in the earlier days of TVB drama series will know he can reach greater heights.
Cheung starring opposite Lau retains that innocent air that catapulted her to stardom years earlier. But that same enduring look and doleful eyes are getting tedious. However, both she and Lau managed to spark some chemistry to keep the momentum going.
Entertaining on the whole, but sadly this will go the way like most Hongkong movies - forgettable.
RUNNING ON KARMA begins with a scene of an individual known as (Mr.) Big (played by Andy Lau in the muscular equivalent of the rubber fat suit he wore for nearly all of Love on a Diet) performing a strip-tease -- along with other exhibitionistic inclined men -- in a night spot filled with screaming women (The loudest of whom might well be Cecilia Cheung's character, Lee Fung Yee). A few scenes later, it's all chaos in the club, however, as it's subject to a police raid that officially began with Big's enthusiastically obeying Lee Fung Yee's cries to take it all off, only to have the bird-like young female pull out a police badge and announce that she's an undercover officer upon his having done so.
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