General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Running on Karma (大只佬)

Running on Karma (大隻佬, also known in mainland China as 大块头有大智慧) is a 2003 Hong Kong film directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, starring Andy Lau and Cecilia Cheung, that uses the frame of a police thriller to explore the Buddhist concept of karma. Lau plays Big (大只佬), a former martial-arts monk who can see a person's karma, and Cheung plays the rookie policewoman Lee Fung-yee, whose past-life misdeeds Big tries in vain to undo.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	Hong Kong premiere 1 October 2003; later openings in France, Finland, Japan, and South Korea³
Directors and writers	Directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai; screenplay by Wai Ka-fai, Yau Nai-hoi, Au Kin-yee, and Yip Tin-shing³
Cast	Andy Lau as Big; Cecilia Cheung as Lee Fung-yee; supporting cast includes Cheung Siu-fai and Karen Tong³
Running time	92 minutes (a 106-minute director's cut and an 85-minute mainland version also exist)⁴
Hong Kong box office	HK$26.33 million, placing third among Chinese-language films in Hong Kong that year¹
Major awards	Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards, from 13 nominations¹
International role	Hong Kong's submission for the 2004 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film¹

Spoilers

Genre and premise

The film resists a single genre label. Critics have described it as, by turns, a romantic comedy, a police procedural, a wire-fu action film, and a spiritual drama, with reviewers noting that it opens like a police picture and turns toward fantasy once Big's visions appear.⁵^•⁶ The International Film Festival Rotterdam's synopsis calls it a film that "looks like a commercial genre film, but then one wonders which genre it is."⁶

The premise combines a criminal investigation with Buddhist cosmology. Big earns a living as a male stripper in a comic bodybuilder's muscle suit after leaving monastic life; during a nightclub raid he meets Lee, and his "karma vision" shows her a past life as a Japanese officer whose killings have left her bearing heavy karmic debt in the present. Meanwhile an Indian contortionist kills a police officer, drawing the whole force into a manhunt.² Big, caught in the middle, tries to keep more people from dying, and the story turns on whether karma can be changed rather than merely seen.²^•⁵

The karma theme

The film's subject is Buddhist karma (業, translated from the Sanskrit karma), the teaching that realized actions are causes that necessarily bear fruit, and that a person's deeds follow them inescapably, a principle summarized in the phrase "nothing can be taken away; only karma follows one" (萬般帶不走，唯有業隨身).⁷ Apple TV's synopsis describes the story's central movement as a psychological process in which a character moves from resisting karma, to attempting to change it, to accepting it, with the conclusion that people should focus on the present and view things with compassion.¹

In the plot as summarized on Douban, the former monk gained his power after his friend Siu-chui was killed; grieving under a tree, he killed a bird by accident, then sat in meditation before it for seven days and nights and came to see karma, seeing the causes behind every result. Unable to accept this calmly, he left the sangha. When he later sees Lee's karmic debt, he secretly helps her solve cases and escape danger, hoping to cleanse her karma, but she is ultimately killed by the fugitive Sun-kuo, the same murderer who killed his friend. Sitting under the tree again and seeing the life cycle of the food chain once more, he attains realization, dons the monk's robes again, pursues the killer for years across mountains and rivers, and finally brings him to surrender and repentance.⁴^•³

A widely circulated Chinese-language analysis also draws a set of parallels between the hero and the Buddha: both are around twenty-nine at the turning point of leaving their former life; both attain insight through watching birds; both meditate beneath a tree for seven days and nights; both contend with an inner demon; and the hero's years of lay life before final realization mirror the Buddha's years of ascetic practice.⁸

Production

Milkyway Image's gamble. The film was an ambitious project for Milkyway Image, the independent production company founded by the two co-directors, and it marked their first move into self-consciously "artistic" cinema, packaging a dark Buddhist tragedy inside a comedy.⁹^•¹⁰ Wai Ka-fai described the approach as putting "some thoughtful things" into mainstream films, and this film is cited as the representative work of that strategy.¹¹

The muscle suit that gives Big his exaggerated physique was a full-body prosthetic created with a Hollywood special-effects company; the production spent more than half a year and a team of twelve people producing seven versions of the makeup.¹²^•⁹ The novelty followed Lau's fat-suit turn in Love on a Diet (2001), and the suit also serves a narrative purpose, emphasizing the contrast between the corporeal and the spiritual.⁹

Shooting in 2003 coincided with the SARS outbreak; once Shanxi province lifted its SARS restrictions, the crew traveled to Wutai Mountain and then filmed in Beijing.¹¹ In 2008, a stunt performer named Chan Cheuk sued the production company Milkyway Image (HK) Ltd for more than HK$5.78 million, alleging that crew negligence during a 2003 action scene, in which he doubled for an Indian actor, caused wrist and elbow injuries that ended his stunt career.¹³

Reception and versions

At the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards in 2004, the film won Best Film, Best Actor for Lau, and Best Screenplay; Cheung won Best Actress at the same ceremony for Lost in Time, and the film also took the Hong Kong Film Critics Society awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.¹^•¹⁴ On Douban it holds a 6.9 rating from more than 90,000 users, with the largest share of votes at three stars.⁴

The film exists in markedly different cuts: 92 minutes in the standard version, a 106-minute director's cut, and an 85-minute version for mainland China, where it was released under the changed title 大块头有大智慧; commentators have argued that the mainland version altered the film's karmic logic and damaged its artistic integrity.⁴^•¹² To's own films repeatedly ran into mainland censorship trims, with both this film and Election having their titles changed for the mainland market.¹¹ The film was also Lau's last for China Star Entertainment, ending a fourteen-year relationship before he moved to Media Asia.¹

A sequel, Running on Karma 3D, was reported in 2015: Wai Ka-fai and Johnnie To were to co-direct with a production budget of about HK$200 million in cooperation with Huayi Brothers, with Gao Yuanyuan replacing Cheung as the female lead, after earlier sequel plans had foundered for lack of a new concept from Wai.¹⁵

Legacy

Retrospective criticism has kept the film in view as one of To and Wai's most unusual collaborations. A Slant Magazine review in 2025 called it "among the strangest yet most compelling" of their team-ups, and the South China Morning Post wrote in 2026 that it "remains an engrossing watch today."⁵^•¹⁰ To has also discussed an abandoned alternate conception of the later plot, in which Big himself was both rescuer and killer and the fugitive Sun-kuo was a split-off personality, an idea ultimately not used.¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Action thrillers, 2000s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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