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"The Greed of Man" is a very powerful tale about how
one man's covetousness can ruin other people's lives, and another
man's continuous struggle in life. This is one of the best modern
series made by TVB that no summary like mine can justify.
Adam and Damian were childhood best friends, but they were like
day and night. While Damian was an intelligent gentleman, Adam
was.. well.. really unreasonable and STUPID. Ironically, they
were both single fathers with 4 children. Damian's wife died in
an accident and he had loved her a lot.
The conflict between the two was due to the charmingly innocent
lady they both fell in love with, Yammie. She was very young at
the time and she grew to like Damian, but Adam would not leave
her alone. This led to the fight of Adam and Damian, which resulted
in Damian somehow becoming retarded. Yammie ended up taking care
of Damian and his 4 children. Things were rough, but they were
all happy and his children loved Yammie a lot. Then Adam beat
Damian up too much one day so Damian died. Pure accident, Adam
claimed, but murder was murder nonetheless - and this would have
important ramifications later on.
Yammie got stuck with Damian's children. Many years later, they
(Sean, Ng Wing Hung, Loletta, Carol) all grew up and the family
feud carried over to their generation. If my memory serves correctly,
Adam hid somewhere in Taiwan and ended up not going to jail for
killing Damian. Adam's children were somewhat successful as the
eldest son, David, was involved in the triads (if you can consider
that success) and the third son Ng Kai Ming was a doctor. As for
the second son Michael, he was an absolute scumbag. He tried to
hit on Loletta but luckily(?!), David fell in love with her.
The story between David and Loletta was one of my favorite parts.
They had the longest and most provocative (some say "romantic")
smooching scenes, but no, that's not the reason why I liked the
part. I was foolishly thinking that this relationship actually
had potential. Dead wrong! Yammie of course beat the living crap
out of Loletta for liking the son of their "enemy,"
but for awhile, David and Loletta were very loving. Loletta was
also pursued by her co-worker, Bowie (then very fresh-looking),
who got his share of beating from David as well.
Sean, the oldest child of Damian, was loved by 2 women. One was
his neighbor Vivian who was very stingy. She was saving up because
she had a genetic heart disease and she was worried that she'd
leave her grandma first. Sadly, her grandma passed away before
her. The other person who loved Sean was Amy who had her roots
in Taiwan. She was the daughter of Kenneth. She seemed pretty
desperate to get Sean in the series (funny that she's the one
who married him in real life), but Sean chose Vivian as his true
love. There were not very many scenes with Sean and Vivian so
this part of the series was rather precious.
Skipping all the details, the feud grew worse and Loletta decided
that she could not abandon her family. David pleaded (really!)
that they go to Canada and leave everything behind, but Loletta
said no and they broke up. David grew EXTREMELY bitter as you
will see. At this time, Michael was also hitting on Sean's youngest
sister, poor little Carol who was just a high school student.
Carol contracted STD's from Michael-- Carol's family was very
mad, and to add to their misery, Adam came back to Hong Kong from
Taiwan.
Yammie and her "children" (since she practically raised
them) wanted to bring Adam to justice. Sometime during the trial,
Adam's sons managed to provoke Carol which made her commit suicide.
DO NOT MISS THIS PART. Talk about the absolute court drama.
Adam lost his trial because he was being stupid again and appointed
himself as a lawyer instead of hiring a professional, so he got
sentenced to serve in prison. David and his younger bros raided
Sean's house and dragged Sean, Ng Wing Hung, and Loletta out to
the top of the building and threw them off, one by one. Sean grabbed
onto something and fortunately survived, but Ng and Loletta went
bye-bye. Did David feel remorse? Nope. Yammie was not there but
she realized what happened and she tried to run over David and
his bros with her bus, but the scums did not die.
Adam did not serve in prison. Instead, he became the head honcho
of the businesses that David established and they all became filthy
rich, while Sean was struggling to get back on his feet. Towards
the end, Adam was being crazy over Yammie (actually, it was more
of Yammie going crazy trying to kill Adam) and somehow managed
to cause her death, by ACCIDENT. I really envied his talent of
how he could accidentally make people die.
The last 1/4 of the series concentrated on how Sean got his revenge.
Because he had a natural instinct to play with money well (taken
after Damian who worked in the stocks company), he was able to
bring Adam and his sons' businesses down and make them go bankrupt.
He got a lot of help from Amy's dad, Kenneth, but he inadvertently
caused Kenneth's death. So Amy left.
Adam could not handle the idea of being in eternal debt, so he
made his sons jump off the building. Sean was watching in his
office as Adam's sons fell off one by one, just like they had
done to his sisters. Adam was going to follow, but his foot *miraculously*
got caught in a rope and he didn't die. He ended up in an asylum
and Sean paid a visit to him, not exactly glad that Adam didn't
die but not exactly unhappy about it either. After all, the man
deserved to suffer in the asylum, no?
The classic ending scene for this series was where Sean and Vivian,
at last together free of trouble, were on a date. Vivian was in
Sean's arms as she slowly fell asleep and her handkerchief flew
out of her hand. Whether she died due to her heart disease or
not is up to your interpretation, as the producer (Wai Ka Fai)
loves hanging endings. Just look at all of his other series such
as Looking Back in Anger, Racing Peak, and Heaven's Retribution.
Things might have been different if Loletta didn't reject David.
The man was willing to throw away everything (even his beloved
dad) to start anew with her, so he was quite worth it. The key
item here was the Bible, as little Loletta gave little David the
Bible that he kept all along. He told her he would give up everything
and just take the Bible with him to Canada. But after they broke
up, he threw the Bible away and changed to a completely heartless
person. I was desperately hoping he would not kill her, but this
series defied everything I wished for! Grr!
I don't consider Adam Cheng as the villain of the series. He
may have been frustratingly stupid, ignorant, stubborn, and clueless,
but that very nature he had keeps him from being labeled as a
villain. In fact, he was not nearly as mean as his sons David
Siu and Michael To. Adam did truly love Yammie; the only problem
was that he didn't get the clue when she said 'no' to him. Do
I pity him? Probably not. His dumb personality cannot justify
his actions.
Smiling sweetly is indeed Vivian's virtue - at first, she was
introduced as a stingy woman but soon enough, it was revealed
that she was really a sweet neighborhood gal who was a tad bit
gullible too. The scene where my heart felt as if it was pinched
was when she thought Sean liked her. He was excited about something
and he hugged her once, and that gave her a wrong idea. So she
spent some money (which is like a SIN for her) cooking him some
nice food, only to find out that he didn't like her just yet.
This was not that dramatic but I became very sentimental to see
Vivian's sad face.
Every cast, whether major or minor, equally shares the credit
of contributing to the superior quality of this series, but my
award must go to Yammie (not what's-***-name as I don't like that
person so much) for portraying such a strong, sacrificing character
without losing her position between veteran actors and young,
rising actors. Here was the woman who gave up her youth and freedom
to take after the children that she had no relation to. Something
I personally would never do. Plus, she was never married to Damian!
That made me admire her even more. I cried tons when she died,
enough to save drying crops. Wuuuhhh! =*(
Follow up - ATV released a remake of this series in 2000 called
"Divine Retribution," starring Adam, Sean, and Amy.
To watch or not to watch?
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