TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
hellokv
Another great movie from Ang Lee. He is always good at telling stories especially with his rhythms and movie language. This is a very complicated topic in China with so many backgrounds and relationships to explain, and each people has their own character and development. But Ang Lee has do a great job. It maybe a little bit hard for young people to understand the performance of each actor, but when you know the background of the war, I'm sure that you will admire the ability of Ang Lee.
cinemajesty
Film Review: "Lust, Caution" (2007)This Venice Film Festival in its 64th Edition anticipating Erotic Thriller directed by Ang Lee as follow-up to Academy Award Winning picture "Brokeback Mountain" for Best Director and further revealing an understatement version versus Paul Verhoeven's effect-driven "Basic Instict" (1992) delivers additional suspense and visualized tensions between the precisely prepared cast members led by Chinese movie star Tony Leung as Mr. Yee, a governmental influenced decision maker in an war-occupied China of year 1942 and actress Wei Tang, who together deliver an honest look on how NC-17 rated motion picture entertainment looks like for an U.S. domestic market with a three explicitly infused scenes of sexual intercourse between encounters from oral, anal to vaginal sex practices in an skillfully captured use of sound design and camera motions in fields of vertical and horizontal planes by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who serves his director well in stark lighting to strong separated color themes of blue, green and black to find the story about revolting students in pre-world-war-2 China 1938 infiltrate governmental agencies over years to come without shying away even from murder to self-prostitution in order to liberate the people of their country from a Japanese stranglehold, which so beautifully finds its cinematic visualization under Ang Lee's direction in the relationship between the high-sparking chemistry of the two leading cast members.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)
lukasz-jozwinski
Hard to say there is a spoiler, but for sure movie is above average.Acting (especially 2 main characters) is at very high level. Plot and drama build with great intensity making you wanna seen what's coming next.I'm not sure what about exactly this picture is about, but I think the most important thing here is feeling (the lust) and consequences that can make you suffer.Would rather give 6.5, but 6 is too low, so 7 ;).Worth watching especially nowadays when it's hard to find something really interesting and moving.
Danusha_Goska Save Send Delete
"Lust Caution" is a big, fat melodrama with two small, lifeless gimmicks where its heart and mind should be. It's the story of a young, beautiful Chinese spy who, implausibly, must seduce a Japanese collaborator in order to set him up for assassination. The question that is meant to keep you watching through endless, empty, boring, setup: Will the would-be assassin fall in love with her quarry, a man she is forced to bed? "Lust Caution" has the production values of a superior melodrama: stitch-perfect vintage costumery: Chinese qi pao, Japanese geisha, and Western power suits and boxy shoulders; big, fat, vintage automobiles, shiny with chrome; and recreated cities of Japanese-occupied 1940s China. This film will satisfy viewers whose only demand of a movie be that it be luscious to look at.The problem is the ersatz gift underneath all those ribbons and inside all that crepe wrapping paper. The movie has no heart, and it has no head. The first hour and a half are unbearably boring and empty. I watched the mahjong scenes a couple of times to make sure I wasn't missing anything. They establish the superficiality of the Chinese collaborators' wives. That could have been accomplished much more quickly. The point of the scenes: look at this Chinese woman's perfect manicure, look at this big, fat ring, look at this silk qi pao. There's nothing there to engage anything other than the eyes.The film's two gimmicks: will the would-be assassin fall in love with her quarry, an utterly despicable man who, the film makes clear, tortures and murders Chinese freedom fighters during his long days at work, "at the office." The second gimmick: graphic sex scenes. In online reviews, some of the film's viewers assume that the act is not simulated, but genuine.Japan, of course, committed wartime atrocities every bit as horrific as those committed by the Nazis. They just committed their crimes farther away from Western news cameras. I won't detail here the nightmares the Japanese created in cities like Nanking; Iris Chang, among others, uncovered these hidden atrocities."Lust Caution" has chosen a monster for its lead. In bed, though, this torturer is one of the world's great lovers. His masterful feats of lovemaking are so acrobatic you'll not be sure if you're viewing a page from the Kama Sutra or a metaphor invoking ramen noodles.I'd really like to sit director Ang Lee down and ask him a question. Why did you cast actor Tony Leung, handsome, tender, and charismatic, as a torturer? Do you really think real life torturers looked anything like Tony Leung? Leung cannot hide the facial expressions of a human, decent, lovable guy. He is not the best choice to depict a man hardened by years of the kind of tortures that the Japanese performed. Yes, being a professional torturer shows on the face. Look at the faces of professional torturers. They don't look like tender lovers. They don't look like Tony Leung.All of this nonsense could have at least been entertaining, but it's not. "Lust Caution" has a single-digit IQ, no soul, and a glacial pace. In addition to be grotesque, it commits the cardinal sin of a popular entertainment. It is almost too boring to sit through.
