Life Without Principle (2011/Indomina/Vivendi DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Film: C+
What
would you do if a bag of money just dropped right in front of you? When $10 Million HK dollars in cash falls into
the laps of some desperate individuals, the lines of morality blur in Johnnie
To’s Life Without Principle (2011).
On the
worst possible day, when the Hong Kong stock
marker crashes this amount of money can save the possible careers of a banker
teller, mafia bookie, mafia investor, or police couple will need the money. Who will get away with it or end up getting
caught?
A young
bank teller who made a series of unwise investments with a mafia bookie and the
investor needs to restore the mafia's fortunes, a desperate police couple who
are in need of money to buy the home of their dreams and all of them have no
relation to one another except they are in deep debt and need money fast. With the death of loan shark the police are
already looking for the missing money and who took them, and that's not to mention
all these gangsters are also involved. Is this money a gift from heaven or a
temptation to sin?
What can
you say, human greed, it always wins (otherwise it wouldn't make a very good
show) Everyone one has principles they live by, but what would it take to make
a person break those principles? (Certainly
if you're desperate it helps.) But is
money the root of evil? I would say
those people who place value on them is the real source of evil, but just
remember karma has always some way of biting back if you are not careful.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is a little washed out, style or not, and
should look better considering it was shot on 35mm in real anamorphic
Technovision, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix is good but not great. This needs a Blu-ray. There are also no extras, so this is a basic
disc, but this is worth seeing if you like To’s films.
- Ricky Chiang
