Bodhisattva Noir: Agency, Theodicy, and Genre in "Running on Karma"

A movie that begins with a shot of its star in a latex muscle suit going full monty in an underground Hong Kong strip club is not an obvious candidate for serious ethical reflection. Add a contortionist murderer, a cynical martial arts monk, and visual quotations from Superman and the prospects look dim indeed. Yet in _Running on Karma_, the Hong Kong commercial auteur Johnnie To and his partner Wai Ka-fai offer a vivid meditation on the themes of agency and theodicy within a karmic worldview precisely through this improbable pastiche of genres and themes drawn from both Chinese and Western cinematic and literary traditions.

_Running on Karma_ tells the story of Biggie, a former martial arts monk with the unwanted power to see karma, and Li Fengyi, a young police officer whose evil karma is about to ripen. When they meet, Biggie is baring it all as a stripper. But it is later revealed that he is in fact a fallen monk who gained the ability to see the past lives of others. Unable to bear the burden that this knowledge presents, he attempts to lose himself in the pleasures of the senses and minor vice. Li is a young woman earnestly trying to do well on the police force. Biggie’s second sight reveals, however, that in a past life she was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army who delighted in beheading prisoners. Despite her wish to do good, she is doomed. Nevertheless, the kindness she shows to Biggie after arresting him for stripping inspires him to save her from her fate. He does so twice using his kung-fu, first to defeat a murderer and then a thief with eccentric superpowers. Each time, however, his vision of the past remains. Resigned, Biggie reveals what he has seen, telling Li her fate is sealed. Determined to make her predestined death meaningful, Li puts herself in harm’s way to draw out an escaped killer from Biggie’s past. When he discovers she has been killed, Biggie seeks revenge until a visionary encounter with his own inner Buddha shows him the futility of vengeance and reconciles him to living within the constraints of a karmic universe.

The plot is, if anything, more complicated than it sounds, yet it is bound together by deft storytelling and an underlying seriousness of moral vision that lies beneath the often playful surface.  By recontextualizing the tropes of the superhero movie and film noir within a karmic universe, To and Wai are able to treat afresh the hoary Buddhist theme of karmic retribution.  The superhero frame throws into relief issues of power and agency, while the trope of the disillusioned noir detective suggests the potential inadequacy of karma as an answer to theodicy.

Biggie is a superhero thrice over. The cartoonishly muscled physique, the kung-fu skills, and even the ability to see past lives reflect the heroic traditions of comic books, pulp martial arts novels and Buddhist lore. He is also a noir detective. Disillusioned with karmic justice, he has abandoned his ideals for a nihilistic life on the margins of society until roused to use his skills for a woman. Li Fengyi, in contrast, despite being a police officer, initially seems to be cast as the damsel in distress. Played by the slight-framed and baby-faced Celia Cheung, Li is transferred early on to homicide, where she appears ill-equipped to defend herself against the dangers that threaten her. Thus, twice in the first act, Biggie comes to her rescue. Yet the lines of power and agency in a karmic universe are not so straightforward. Biggie’s muscular interventions prove unable to save Li from her fate. Moreover, the film indicates that even to the extent that they delayed her doom, it may have been the kindness through which Li established a connection with Biggie that was ultimately responsible. And in the movie’s third act it is Li who sets in motion, through her act of sacrifice, the chain of events which lead to Biggie’s encounter with his inner Buddha. In the end, she saves him.

By casting Biggie as a man whose faith has been shaken, the film also draws out the poignancy of suffering in a karmic world. Karma is not infrequently pointed to as the most rational answer to the problem of apparently undeserved suffering. In fact, the doctrine says, we’ve all got it coming to us. While this may be satisfying to the disinterested intellectual, _Running on Karma_ suggests that it is cold comfort to someone actually dealing with suffering or the prospect thereof in Li Fengyi’s case. How could it _feel_ just, when she does not remember what she has done? Moreover, given the Buddhist doctrine of non-self, _she_ did not do it. As Biggie tells Li, “Li Fengyi is not the Japanese soldier. The Japanese soldier is not Li Fengyi. It’s just that the Japanese soldier killed people, so Li Fengyi has to die.” This is why Biggie says, “I see karma. I know that it is just. But I cannot be a monk anymore.” Karma in the film is endless cycles of sin and suffering, revenge and retribution driven by a force that those that undergo it are unaware of.  Faced with this senseless symmetry, Biggie simply tries not to see. Like the protagonists of film noir, he has lost his faith in the system, but here the system is the universe itself.

The answer, the film suggests, is to accept the limitations imposed by the intractability of karma without falling into nihilism but instead attempting to disrupt the cycle, not through the childish heroism of musclemen, but through small acts of kindness and faithful adherence to virtue. The film ends not with Biggie battling his nemesis but embracing him. The film thus adopts the tropes of noir and superhero films but subverts those genres’ expectations and assumptions to create a Buddhist morality tale for a global, twenty-first century Asia.