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Introduction
The true story of corruption and betrayal leading up to one of the largest financial scandals in history, Man on the Run (2023) uncovers the shocking true story of a corrupt group of co-conspirators who jeopardized a country’s hope for financial stability. Their influence extended from the highest levels of the Malaysian government to the glamorous enclaves of Hollywood.
At the heart of this scandal lies the enigmatic Low Taek Jho, known to most as Jho Low, a mysterious businessman, and notorious playboy. Teaming up with Prime Minister Najib Razak, Low orchestrated a scheme to exploit 1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund established in 2009 with the noble purpose of benefiting the people of Malaysia.
In 2015, intrepid journalist Clare Rewcastle-Brown received leaked financial documents, setting off a global investigation that uncovers a staggering amount of money being channeled into international bank accounts, all in support of Low’s extravagant lifestyle. This includes the acquisition of lavish properties, a private jet, a yacht, excessive A-list celebrity parties, and even the financing of the Hollywood blockbuster film, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
Through the meticulous work of director Cassius Michael Kim, who gains unprecedented access to key individuals involved on both sides of the story, Man on the Run unravels a complex web of greed and corruption. It delves into gripping first-person accounts, unveiling the extensive repercussions of one of the most colossal financial scandals in history.
Cassius Michael Kim is a director, producer, and writer who helped create the CNN Original Series, The Wonder List with Bill Weir. He was the senior producer on the documentary program over its first three seasons, directing and producing half of the show’s twenty documentary hours from locations as diverse as Vanuatu, Madagascar, and Egypt. Prior to joining CNN, Cassius worked at ABC News. He began his career at the independent film production company This is That.
Most recently, Kim directed, wrote and executive produced the social justice documentary short 7 Years and Counting in collaboration with the Grassroots Law Project. 7 Years and Counting was a Vimeo Staff Pick and an official selection of the 2022 Las Cruces International Film Festival, the 2022 Alexander Valley Film Festival and the 2022 Minnow Short Film Festival.
Prior to that, he produced and filmed Stockton On My Mind, in collaboration with Marc Levin’s Blowback Productions and HBO Documentary Films, about Mayor Michael Tubbs Jr. and his progressive policy programs in the city of Stockton, CA. Stockton On My Mind was an official selection of the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and the 2020 AFI DOCS Festival and was nominated in the category of Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary at the 2021 News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently sat down with director Cassius Michael Kim to discuss his new documentary feature, Man on the Run. They talked about investigating the mysterious fugitive Jho Low, the research process, what it was like to interview current and former Prime Ministers, and the massive rise and fall of this mysterious criminal, among other topics.
Editors Note: This article has been modified for clarity and content.
Interview
Glen Dower:
Cassius Michael Kim, how are you, Sir?
Cassius Michael Kim:
I’m very well. How are you, Glen?
Glen Dower:
I am very well, thank you. Now, we are here to talk about your documentary Man on the Run about the infamous Jho Low. So, I was trying to come up with a title for him, but I struggled. I don’t want to call him a businessman and I don’t want to call him a CEO. Is he an enabler? Is he an orchestrator? What do you think, having researched the man and his dealings so deeply?
Cassius Michael Kim:
A dilettante. The process was about six months of researching, not just him, but also the various layers of the case. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s one of the more densely layered conspiracies, I think in recent memory. Not to say that conspiracies aren’t densely layered by their nature, I suppose, but I thought I was just impressed by the audacity. So, I think of the scope of this one in particular, especially with the various elements of high society that it reaches.
It just kind of has it all, doesn’t it? Hollywood. Wall Street. Middle Eastern royalty. American politics. Malaysian politics. It just goes everywhere and every time you turn the page and you’re reading about something or some other next thing, you know, Pras from the Fugees is involved and you’re like, where is this story going? Where does it end? And it always revolves around a heliocentric orbit.
Glen Dower:
Absolutely. So we’ll come to those names you mentioned in a minute, but I just wanted to say I have invested in the story already. I live in the Middle East, I’ve lived in Abu Dhabi and I now live in Qatar. I share a joke with my friends that the Middle East is keeping the ‘brown envelope industry’ alive. A recent example is Qatar being awarded the recent FIFA World Cup.
Cassius Michael Kim:
Yeah, that’s right!
Glen Dower:
Those layers, like you say, of royal secret meetings, very ‘quid pro quo’ etc. Consequently, did you at any point fear you were going too far and accusing. For example, His Royal Highness in Abu Dhabi of being involved with this?
Cassius Michael Kim:
Well, this is the thing, right? I feel like this story, the way I’ve presented it, it’s not really my telling of the story. What I’ve tried to do is create a streamlined narrative based on the investigative reporting of so many excellent reporters. They’re the ones who did the hard work and the information that’s being presented.
Not all of it, because I did manage the land a couple of exclusives with FBI agents, and I feel like my interview with the former Malaysian president, we covered well-trodden ground so to speak, but it was some new elements, but the bulk of it is working off the backs of these amazing journalists and shining a light on their work. So I knew that the information I presented had to be vetted, had already been vetted. But also then once again through me, so I feel very comfortable with what’s in the film. I know we explored the idea of filming in the UAE and I have some contacts out there.
I spoke to them about it at length when we were in the development process, but ultimately it just didn’t seem like that would be something that would be worth the bang for the buck. Also, I wasn’t optimistic about getting access to the people who were involved or finding a willingness to speak about some of these topics, whether it’s Visa or iPic or any of these other tangential elements that were so intricately involved in 1MDB.
Glen Dower:
You do have some amazing contributors. For example, we’ve got former attorney generals; we’ve got former global ambassadors and former members of the Malaysian Parliament. So, what was your pitch to them that would encourage them to say ‘Yes, I want to talk to Cassius’?
Cassius Michael Kim:
I think you know this as well as a journalist I’m sure, it’s about trust. So when you’re a journalist, it’s about telling your sources exactly what kind of story you’re trying to tell and what angle you’re trying to approach it from. For me, it was always about objectivity and presenting a more nuanced portrayal of the story than had been done in the past, I believe. I think I benefited because there was some element within that circle of people where they felt dissatisfied with the way the story had been presented in the past.
One of the main things that attracted me to the story was the fact that this is such a vast story but has such a low Q rating in the zeitgeist. And I never understood why, even when I was putting my team together. Most of them were very experienced journalists. They weren’t really familiar with the story, which surprised me. So I think those elements combined as well as my proposal to just tell a complete story that also involved the Malaysian people, right?
It’s not just about the Hollywood stuff. I mean that’s kind of like the bait and switch that’s you hook people with the glitz, but then we get into the meat of the matter and that’s always my intent. So it was based on my pledge that it would be about the people of the scandal, not the shiny lights and the people include the victims. How do you address the victims of mass financial fraud?
It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time pondering. Also, it’s something the people involved in the film spend a lot of time pondering. And I think with their guidance and as well as our exploration of Malaysia, we were able to at least do some credence to that.
Glen Dower:
Yes, definitely. You spent a bit of chunk of the movie interviewing former Prime Minister and you spent a lot of time on that interview. In short, were you ‘going after him’?
Cassius Michael Kim:
It wasn’t really like a gotcha kind of situation. I had watched a number of interviews he’d taken part in and I had seen one in particular where he just got up and walked away when being badgered. And so you have to strike that balance. You want to get to the heart of the matter. You want to address the number of topics that we have to address that I plan on addressing in the film. I think my primary objective in terms of the interview itself was to see if I could get him to accept some kind of responsibility for what had been done.
So, I attacked that in a number of different ways, most of which are in the film, but really my interview style is very conversational with him. I think I took more of a journalist attack, but also it was a prolonged affair. He was there for about five hours and there were breaks in between where he would huddle with his advisors and come back and try to clarify points about what we had discussed.
But also the way it’s presented, there’s very little editing within the interview itself. Because obviously, there’s a selection of the questions, but I wanted to present it as uncut as possible to make sure people understood that this was our conversation and this was how not only he answered, but how he defended himself.
Glen Dower:
Speaking of the zeitgeist, in recent years cinema has been exploring that element of financial corruption on a global scale. Your film could form a great triple bill with The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short. So, why do you think we as audiences enjoy seeing the rise, and corruption coming to fruition, but then obviously the fall? Why do you think audiences enjoy that story?
Cassius Michael Kim:
Wow. I don’t know. I think not everyone enjoys seeing the balloon pricked out of hubris and I can’t really speak to why. But I mean as someone who’s often in the audience themselves, I think it’s always interesting to see that journey. Whether it’s a hero’s journey or a villain’s journey. And then hubris I think is such a big part of this; unrestrained hubris, in fact. I mean it has so many elements, right?
It’s not just about the hubris of this man, it’s about the hubris of the celebrities who thought they found this unlimited piggy bank. It’s about bankers who thought they could just steal unbidden and without consequence and about the politicians as well. And I think the saddest part of it is that so many have not been held accountable, and to me that was the ultimate draw of the story. Does it shine a light on something that so many people thought they’d gotten away with? Even now.
Glen Dower:
Of course, the man himself is still on the run. Where do you think he is now based on your research and what’s your gut feeling where he is now?
Cassius Michael Kim:
What I’m hearing is that he splits his time being ferried around mainland China, and Hong Kong in the protection of Chinese Intelligence who kind of moved him and his family from Safe House to Safe House. I believe Project Brazen, Bradley Hope’s company, crowdsourced a search for a picture of him in recent months. And someone submitted a photo of someone’s back from Shanghai Disneyland. Purportedly of him and his family.
But there are also rumors that he’s dead. I don’t know how much truth there is to that and I don’t know that he’s quite outlived his usefulness to the Chinese government. And of course, no one knows where the bodies are buried more than he does. So it’s an open question as to how long he can sustain his viability.
Glen Dower:
Well, that’s a story to be told. Do you think you would be up for directing the biopic one day?
Cassius Michael Kim:
Ha! I doubt it and I don’t think he is deserving of anything like that. And I think he’s a cipher, right? He’s a cipher for all the elements of our society that represent almost nihilism. What was the end game? There was no end game. Did he steal this money for some kind of grand purpose? No. He spent it to fritter it away on nonsensical things, parting with, I mean, how vapid can you get? It’s really sad when you read this, and I’ve said this before in other interviews, but what always struck me is that there was no end game. What was his plan?
Glen Dower:
Exactly. Did he just want to be famous? Did he just want to meet celebrities? Then be the diplomatic go-between being countries? He reached that, but exactly, what was his plan: to become Prime Minister of Malaysia one day? Or was he going to be ambassador to the USA and be in Donald Trump’s cabinet?
Cassius Michael Kim:
Did he have a goal beyond actual power? Like, power for power’s sake means nothing unless you can utilize it. But also to have any kind of sustainability, you have to have a plan to keep the fraud going. In that respect, the scope of the crime is impressive. But the absolute lack of foresight in terms of making this sustainable or evading capture was just something completely absent from his MO.
Which makes it even more difficult to understand which is why I attribute nihilism to this. He had to know he was going to get caught. It seems unbelievable to myself and other observers that he could have ever expected this to go any other way than the way it has. So that leaves more questions and then the man is not around to answer those questions.
Glen Dower:
Sure. Now, at the end, you have name cards where you say who was approached and who did not contribute, such as of course, Leonardo Di Caprio, Jamie Fox, Paris Hilton, and representatives from Goldman Sachs. What would your interview have been if say Di Caprio had agreed to interview? What questions would you have asked him?
Cassius Michael Kim:
The longer this went on, the more red flags were not raised in your mind about this man’s objectives and where this money came from. If it was just a one or two-time thing? I think it’s completely understandable. These people are paid to play constantly, but to have this happen for years, that’s where I think incredulity enters the conversation, especially not just Di Caprio, but Jamie Fox and Swiss Beats and Alicia Keys and these people who stuck by him even when there was so much smoke boggles the mind and it actually, it’s a matter of principles and morality. It’s something I think is completely lacking these days.
Glen Dower:
Absolutely. Now, I’ve had the privilege of speaking to many documentary directors on behalf of Cinema Scholars, and there is one question I enjoy asking as every answer is different. As a documentary filmmaker, when do you know you have enough? When do you know you have enough in the can to say: ‘We’re done’?
Cassius Michael Kim:
That’s a good question! I don’t think you ever know because there are infinite permutations, and I don’t mean this flippantly at all. Having done a lot of these, you always fear there’s not enough, right? I think the benefit of this is that all the interviews are so long. There’s so much ground to cover that most of the interviews are two, or three hours long.
So in terms of fear bulk, you got to think, all right, I have a story here, but I think the question you ask yourself is, are there enough dynamic moments? Is there enough opportunity to give the characters humanity? And that’s what I spent more time chasing. Once we had it storyboarded and laid out narratively about the topics we wanted to cover, the first couple was something like three and a half hours long, which is way too long, obviously.
But it’s not just about the story. It’s about the humanity of it. I’ve said this a lot lately. But it’s really about the people who took part and suffered and were the victims. Or were the conspirators as well as the unseen people of Malaysia whom I’ve tried to give a presence to? It’s just imbuing them with humanity and also conveying my emotional experience. I think what’s more relevant to this question is when I’m there if I have a moment where I feel like this ties it together.
And that scene at the end with the FBI agents, in the night market of Ramadan. I very much had a sense, that this kind of feels like an emotional tying together of everything that mixed between closure and unsettled. When Dave Smith sighs and says, ‘No, you just never get closure in corruption cases’ because it’s the nature of chasing corruption. I thought that was a very apt description of what this story is all about.
Glen Dower:
Completely agree. Well, I really enjoyed your film. I’m a business and current affairs guy so there was so much for me, and I know for our readers, to enjoy. Thank you so much for your time, Sir.
Cassius Michael Kim:
Thanks, Glen, bye.
Man on the Run had its world premiere on September 8, 2023. The documentary opens in select theaters and on Netflix starting September 15, 2023.
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