The movie starts out interesting as a look into Chinese investment banking industry. Brokers are pressured to sell investments. They are pushing BRIC, a portfolio of 20 stocks that invests in firms in Brazil, India, and China...something I personally wouldn't mind owning. It is "high risk." The bank charges 2%. People on low fixed incomes are allowed to invest their life savings in the deal. Teresa (Denise Ho) is one such broker who is torn between ripping people off and doing her job.Yuen (Hoi-Pang Lo) hates the banking system and keeps his money in liquid savings. When the EU economy crashes, its ripple effect hits Chinese investors. Yuen is now rich as he has money to loan at 30% interest rates. Given a window of opportunity, Teresa manages to obtain a bag of money belonging to Yuen, a man who seems to disgust her. The film's idea of humor is to make puns of BRIC and brick. And:Who ordered noodles before the banquet? The fat guy over there.Later it does engage in more sophisticated humor, even a bit of mild irony.I was more fascinated when they made an arrest. They said something similar to the Miranda rights and offered the criminal a hood to wear to shield himself from the public, unlike in the US where the cops parade criminals around the police station doing "the walk of shame." Inspector Cheung (Richie Ren) is a straight laced detective/ police officer. His wife Connie (Myolie Wu) wants to lease an apartment out of their price range.The crime syndicate is a brotherhood, so everyone is confusingly called "brother" or "sister" or "older sister" or "Fourth brother." It is difficult to tell who is blood related and who is not, possibly a translation issue. The gangsters, banking, gambling, and investment industries are all related in this film. There is also a plethora of US name brand products in the background.The film shifts from the banking industry plot to the crime subplot. I initially thought they were chronological, but as it was they were concurrent and it takes you up to the point when they both come together. We then run the cop subplot through. At this point the film picks up.The story was mildly interesting, but what was more interesting was watching the Chinese operating Hong Kong like real capitalists. Most of the signs were still in English. I am giving the film 4 stars mostly due to the modern cultural insight into China and the promise it shows in Chinese film production. It was refreshing to see a Chinese film where the actors don't spend a lot of time fighting horizontally in the air, defying gravity.No f-bombs, sex, or nudity. Pretty Chinese women in short business skirts.

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

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.

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.