Life Is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive

Exploding a seemingly simple premise - a nameless “cowboy” courier (Spencer Nakasako) arrives in pre-Handover Hong Kong to deliver a mysterious briefcase to a mercurial Mob boss whilst becoming entangled with his femme fatale mistress (Cora Miao) – independent filmmaking legend Wayne Wang’s Life is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive barrels through inspired genre deconstruction guerrilla docu-fiction and fierce political jeremiad all with a keen sense of humor and one of the richest visual palettes of the 1990s. Tracking the Man-with-no-name’s increasingly byzantine mission across every level of the city’s social strata we’re introduced fortune families cabdrivers hustlers butchers and more each punctuating the high-octane Neo-noir narrative with instantly memorable monologues that capture a now-distant era in Hong Kong history. (Arbelos)