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Lust, Caution
Focus Features


6.0

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 80 votes
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FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: NC-17 for some explicit sexuality

Starring Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, and Wang Lee Hom

Shanghai, 1942. Japan's World War II occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a phone call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began several years earlier, in China in 1938. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi. With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min. Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism, As the theater troupe's new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences--and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yee's trust by befriending his wife and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and the scenario proceeds as scripted--until an unexpectedly fatal twist spurs her to flee. (Focus Features)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Romance \| Suspense/Thriller \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Eileen Chang (story) James Schamus Hui-Ling Wang
DIRECTED BY:	Ang Lee
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 19, 2008 Theatrical: September 28, 2007
RUNNING TIME:	157 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	U.S./China/Taiwan
LANGUAGE(S):	Mandarin

Alternate Title: Se, jie

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

Lee has perfectly captured the details, textures, sights and sounds of a China caught between East and West, occupied by an ancient enemy and quaking on the eve of an earth-shaking revolution.

Slate Dana Stevens

Lust, Caution is both a cannily constructed spy thriller and a grim kind of love story, but it harbors no illusions about the transformative potential of either revolutionary violence or sexual passion.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The sex is REALLY hot. Not hardcore pornographic (at least by my definition of the term) but close.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A rich, beautifully detailed espionage thriller that captures the bygone days of Shanghai - and 1940s Hollywood noirs' romantic evocations of same - Lust, Caution is also one of those rare movie experiences: Its scenes of the trysts between Yee and Mak, from their rough-stuff first encounter to the long, tangled love-making sessions of subsequent meetings, are truly erotic.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A brooding meditation on the unnerving power and terrible cost of emotional and political masquerades, the Chinese-language Lust, Caution gets under your skin with its examination of what qualifies as love and what does not.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Though Lust, Caution resounds with these disconcerting themes, it operates on the same principle that distinguishes all lasting romances, be they "Wuthering Heights," "Casablanca" or "When Harry Met Sally."

Empire Damon Wise

A beautifully rendered, long, drawn-out but ultimately very satisfying story of betrayal and revenge in an uneasy setting of wartime paranoia.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Stylized and visually arresting, with intense sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is an immersion into another time, place and mentality.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The film is never less than beautiful, but it's never truly absorbing.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Film by film, Ang Lee, from Taipei out of the University of Illinois, has become one of the world's leading directors. This film was his second Golden Lion winner in three years at the Venice Film Festival. But it is not among his best films. It lacks the focus and fire that his characters finally find. Less sense, more sensibility.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

I didn't feel the love between the flowering idealist and the ruthless killer. If I did, I would have given the movie four stars. Everything else is wonderful.

USA Today Claudia Puig

But reserve dampens the passion in Lust, Caution, his beautifully mounted but rather unmoving film. It feels surprisingly cold, despite this erotic thriller's ultra-explicit sex scenes.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

After seeing "Brokeback Mountain," with its sanctified couplings against a backdrop of purple mountain majesties, some of us felt that Ang Lee owed us a dirty movie with more bodily fluids. Lust, Caution is that movie--for maybe 10 of its 158 minutes. The rest of the film is absorbing, though.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Sumptuously produced and beautifully visualized, this is a filmmaker's meditation on the culture that nurtured him. As a piece of entertainment, however, it's hoist by its own paradox -- an almost thrill-free thriller that seems seductive, yet stays resolutely remote.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The perfectly dressed surfaces couldn't be more lovely, but the long fashion show to the finale smothers the emotions under the length and the look, and Lee's insights into the messy feelings that simmer and stew in the hothouse of sex are, frankly, fairly mundane.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II, Ang Lee's uneven new film is a bit like a Chinese variant on Paul Verhoeven's "The Black Book." The sex scenes in this otherwise overly prim period piece are extremely graphic.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Conceptually, Lust, Caution has been thoroughly thought-through, down to every lipstick stain Wei leaves on her teacups.

Premiere Howard Karren

It might have been better to have played it straight — small instead of epic, chronological instead of deconstructed — and to give his characters some explicitness in history instead of the bedroom.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

This is a movie guaranteed to turn you into a vacillating commitment-phobe, embracing it passionately one moment and then backing off cautiously the next.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

There's too much caution and not enough lust.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Running two hours and forty minutes, never finds the same balance: by the time he gets to the lust, it is too late to throw caution to the winds.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Tang Wei brings a terrible and awe-inspiring purity to an impure character.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Lust, Caution wants us to feel the erotic ping of buttoned-up people ripping open those buttons, but too often it's the film's drama that's under wraps.

Newsweek David Ansen

There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Outside the bedroom, the wartime swirl of intrigue never develops beyond postcard imagery, however. This is one of the major disappointments of the film-going year.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Ang Lee's lugubrious spy epic Lust, Caution brings to mind what soldiers say about war: that it's long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement.

Variety Derek Elley

Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Ang Lee's latest foray into forbidden love is as monotonous and disaffecting as "Brokeback Mountain" was gripping and immediate.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Lust, Caution is a disappointment coming from director Ang Lee, but it's a watchable one, and it rattles around in your head for a long time after you've seen it, as much for what it does right as for where it goes wrong.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The bursts of sex and violence that earned this picture an NC-17 rating offer only temporary respite from the encroaching dullness.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It’s one of the most cautious readings of lust ever put to film.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Lust, Caution -- a truer title would be “Caution: Lust” -- is a sleepy, musty period drama about wartime maneuvers and bedroom calisthenics, and the misguided use of a solid director.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Lust, Caution could have done with a lot more lust and a lot less caution.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The sex scenes -- intense, affecting and emotionally raw -- are the best thing about this frustratingly limp movie.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 80 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Holly c. gave it an8:
Lust,Caution is definitely worth seeing if you haven't already. Incredible immersion into WWII China and a group of young college dramatists who take an active role in resisting the Japanese occupation--but more importantly, the Chinese upper class who collaborate with the Japanese. Both Tony Leung and Tang Wei are absolutely stellar here. The characters these two become just stick with you--along with their complex relationship/story. The sex scenes were amazing--though I don't think they were matched with the same dramatic/suspense --it's almost as if they were too subtle with much of it--that's just my opinion, though I know others thought it was overt enough. I thought the ending, particularly, was perfect.

Kathleen J. gave it an8:
I liked the juxtaposition of political vs. sexual passion, intimacy vs. isolationism, and intellectual vs. emotional connections. Also beautifully and convincingly filmed.

Tim C. gave it a10:
This is a great film if you understand Chinese language and the historic background. It kept me focused throughout the entire movie. Ang Lee knew that there could be cultural barrier for westerners watching this movie, for he said he cared most about how Taiwanese and Chinese people viewed the film. Sense of patriotism exhibited during the Japanese occupation and Chinese feeling about traitors is not easily appreciated. By the way, it is largely based on a true story.

jorja L. gave it a10:
Those who didn't "get" this story seemed to have REALLY not gotten it. This is a truly beautiful movie, deeply touching and dramatic. It wasn't a popcorn action movie for people whose attention span can't make it past a 30-second TV ad.

Macy T. gave it a9:
Unlike the previous films directed by Mr Lee, Ang. This film give me a strong sense of heaviness and tension. I was moved and I had complex feelings about that. It's certainly not a film about erotics. It's a film showing the love and lust, the human struggling and strikes for survival in that period of time.

Damien A. gave it a6:
There is no way this is a 10 movie!! This was mutton dressed up as lamb! The climax was laughable in its simplistic cliche ridden take on the two main characters.. Mediocrity that gets plaudits makes me so mad! If this is a 10 movie then Chinatown or even Ang Lee's The Ice Storm must be over 40 out of ten each!

Adam M. gave it a10:
A lot of the subtlety are possibly lost on viewers who aren't familiar with the idea that there are many Chinese languages, which is perhaps one reason they complain about the first half being boring, or limp as the Salon reviewer wrote. The heroine was originally from Shanghai (speak Shanghainese) was posing as someone who grew up in Hong Kong (speak Cantonese). With no exposure of the other language an native Shanghainese (a person that is born in Shanghai) wouldn't understand a word in Cantonese (as in the language), and vice versa. In one scene the heroin and the wives were listening to 评弹, an art form that originated from Suzhou, a province that borders Shanghai. Suzhou's culture and language is v similar to Shanghai while quite different from Hong Kong's. You can see the heroin was tense all through, pretending that she doesn't really know anything a word of it. The equivalent in terms of European languages would be a Portuguese girl posing as a French girl, sitting through a Spanish play while pretending that she doesn't understand a word of it.

Lust, Caution Focus Features

Lust, Caution
Focus Features