Lost, Caution?
Added 2/12/2010
This movie had so much potential. But after watching it, I felt disappointed and used for a few bucks.
The quality of the scenes and acting is superb. However, when you sit down and watch it, nothing comes together. What is the movie about? Why does it keep inconsistently flashing various scenes back and forth? It's a gorgeous film, but with no depths to write home about.
I forced myself to look it up online and read plot summaries until I knew what I was watching.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Beautiful sexy sado-masochistic anti-Japanese propaganda film
Added 2/5/2010
The fetching Wei Tang spruced in Western attire with tilted cap crossing a street is, in itself, beautiful to watch, and this tight dark story of love and betrayal has intense coercive sex scenes bordering on sado-masochism. The film kept me guessing about its direction, successfully. However, the street scenes seemed staged like it was a Hollywood set. I kept sensing we weren't really in Shanghai, but on a Hollywood back-lot after a directory had just yelled "action", and the extras seemed fake somehow -- not real peddling taxi drivers. Further, I watched this on a high definition TV and noticed how the tiny bumps and pimples on the characters faces kept moving around, sometimes within a scene, which suggested that the filming had happened on different days. High definition TV gets us MUCH closer to the faces of actors and we get a chance to see how they're not much different from ourselves after a good look in the mirror. The migrating-zit phenomenon suggests a need for software developers to write a program called "digital makeup" which smooths out the pixels of pimples, an electronic pimple cream. Surely movie-makers are hard at work here writing the code as I type.
Wei Tang's task is to lure an evil Japanese spy chief to a place where he can be assassinated. The bait is sex; but the chief is cautious; hence the title. Several scenes of forceful sex continue to paint him as the "bad guy" but assassination opportunities keep getting stymied. To play her seductive role fully, it helps her avoid detection if she truly falls in love with him -- so to cause his entrapment and his death, she is pushed to fully play the part of a real lover. And can she do this without really falling in love with the evil spy chief? That is, is it possible to pretend like one is in "love" without really falling in "love"? Tough question. The film explores this. And the part is ably played by Wei Tang.
On a totally different level, I saw this film as propaganda, since depiction of the Japanese was consistently evil and depiction of the Chinese was consistently good, and I wonder which foreign policy purposes are served by this film. My cynicism suggests that some murky foreign policy agendas are at work here although I can't prove anything. The deep lingering national resentment by Chinese over Japanese aggression before WW2 and afterwards continues to fester here, and this film won't help diffuse the tensions.
Overall, four stars.
Thomas W. Sulcer
author of Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism (Amazon/Kindle)
free pdf if requested by email
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Languid and gorgeous
Added 1/1/2010
Languid, sensual, erotic, breathtaking, thought-provoking, gorgeous. Those are the adjectives that come to mind regarding Ang Lee's luxurious Lust, Caution.
According to the negative reviews, this is far too boring, too sexual, not sexual enough, implausible, and painfully too long. It's an art house picture that liberal artsy types feel compelled to favorably review or else risk losing the title to their Prius. No doubt, if you went into this movie expecting a hot-blooded, breakneck-paced pot-boiler, you would be severely disappointed. Knowing Ang Lee, however, I can't see how one would expect that. Like so many of his movies, this movie is beautiful to behold, an emotional feast, and inevitably satisfying to my soul.
The plot is secondary to the human insight and so is the much-ballyhooed sex. This is a movie about people and the pain of love. It is a delicious exploration of obsession, lust, love, anger, humiliation, duplicity, and duty. This is the type of movie you commit time and thought to, and there are far too few of them anymore. It is not a movie that clobbers you over the head with explosions and in-your-face ADHD storytelling, but rather a relaxed study of human behavior. If you've got the time and sensibility to devote, I highly recommend Lust, Caution.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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You have to be inhuman not to be moved
Added 12/17/2009
What a movie this is. It's made an impact on me which will last a long time.
The only jarring thing about it is the hype about the sex. The DVD cover also seems to use the sex angle. There's nothing wrong with that and I thought the way in which the sex scenes evolve is wonderful. The sex itself is awesome, but it's just that that's not the point.
I knew about Tony Leung. But Tang Wei's portrayal of a girl who passes through many stages in a short period of four years is mindblowing. She comes of age in turbulent times, she is abandoned by her father, and she finds meaning in a cause, she's prepared to give everything for it...and then she starts to feel love for the villain she is supposed to snare. That creates the tension between lust and caution. The transition points in the story are done very well.
I'm no expert, just a bit of a movie buff, but for sure this is one of the great movies of all time for the flawless way in which it captures human dynamics. Then there are the other layers like how well Shanghai seems to have been created, the score and the recreation of the period. BTW the fact that people have given it one star tells me something us humans...
It should be disappointing to some people at least that the suggested tags for reviews are nc-17, erotic and porn! I think I did my good deed for the day by using "human drama" and "Chinese history".
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Never Pin Your Revolutionary Hopes and Aspirations on a Supple Young Whoore With Furtive Eyes and Perky Teets
Added 12/16/2009
That must be the moral of the story to this film. I can think of no other edification other than the carnal kind to be had from it.
This morbid little piece of film sensuality really carved a niche deep in the dank corner of my bitter old heart. I must say that little in this world compares to endless moments of sheer tedium watching old betches play mahjong and twiddle away their days with bourgeoisie gossip of the Far East. That said, there was little else to rivet me to the screen during this "thriller." What?! you say. Unless your idea of excitement is watching some egomaniacle "Dick Cheney of the Orient" force his tiny Asian pekker into a sweet young dandy who is playing a dangerous game of covert ops, well...
For the sake of intelligent argument, let us forsake the notion that any of this could have possibly played itself out in real life. The intelligensia gobble this shet up by the bucket full, but it really just leaves you spent and used like a back alley raping. Evil triumphs, we get it.
For a minute there, I thought I had more to say...but looking back, I realize I've already said too much.
0 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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Lost, Caution?
Added 2/12/2010
This movie had so much potential. But after watching it, I felt disappointed and used for a few bucks.
The quality of the scenes and acting is superb. However, when you sit down and watch it, nothing comes together. What is the movie about? Why does it keep inconsistently flashing various scenes back and forth? It's a gorgeous film, but with no depths to write home about.
I forced myself to look it up online and read plot summaries until I knew what I was watching.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Beautiful sexy sado-masochistic anti-Japanese propaganda film
Added 2/5/2010
The fetching Wei Tang spruced in Western attire with tilted cap crossing a street is, in itself, beautiful to watch, and this tight dark story of love and betrayal has intense coercive sex scenes bordering on sado-masochism. The film kept me guessing about its direction, successfully. However, the street scenes seemed staged like it was a Hollywood set. I kept sensing we weren't really in Shanghai, but on a Hollywood back-lot after a directory had just yelled "action", and the extras seemed fake somehow -- not real peddling taxi drivers. Further, I watched this on a high definition TV and noticed how the tiny bumps and pimples on the characters faces kept moving around, sometimes within a scene, which suggested that the filming had happened on different days. High definition TV gets us MUCH closer to the faces of actors and we get a chance to see how they're not much different from ourselves after a good look in the mirror. The migrating-zit phenomenon suggests a need for software developers to write a program called "digital makeup" which smooths out the pixels of pimples, an electronic pimple cream. Surely movie-makers are hard at work here writing the code as I type.
Wei Tang's task is to lure an evil Japanese spy chief to a place where he can be assassinated. The bait is sex; but the chief is cautious; hence the title. Several scenes of forceful sex continue to paint him as the "bad guy" but assassination opportunities keep getting stymied. To play her seductive role fully, it helps her avoid detection if she truly falls in love with him -- so to cause his entrapment and his death, she is pushed to fully play the part of a real lover. And can she do this without really falling in love with the evil spy chief? That is, is it possible to pretend like one is in "love" without really falling in "love"? Tough question. The film explores this. And the part is ably played by Wei Tang.
On a totally different level, I saw this film as propaganda, since depiction of the Japanese was consistently evil and depiction of the Chinese was consistently good, and I wonder which foreign policy purposes are served by this film. My cynicism suggests that some murky foreign policy agendas are at work here although I can't prove anything. The deep lingering national resentment by Chinese over Japanese aggression before WW2 and afterwards continues to fester here, and this film won't help diffuse the tensions.
Overall, four stars.
Thomas W. Sulcer
author of Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism (Amazon/Kindle)
free pdf if requested by email
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Languid and gorgeous
Added 1/1/2010
Languid, sensual, erotic, breathtaking, thought-provoking, gorgeous. Those are the adjectives that come to mind regarding Ang Lee's luxurious Lust, Caution.
According to the negative reviews, this is far too boring, too sexual, not sexual enough, implausible, and painfully too long. It's an art house picture that liberal artsy types feel compelled to favorably review or else risk losing the title to their Prius. No doubt, if you went into this movie expecting a hot-blooded, breakneck-paced pot-boiler, you would be severely disappointed. Knowing Ang Lee, however, I can't see how one would expect that. Like so many of his movies, this movie is beautiful to behold, an emotional feast, and inevitably satisfying to my soul.
The plot is secondary to the human insight and so is the much-ballyhooed sex. This is a movie about people and the pain of love. It is a delicious exploration of obsession, lust, love, anger, humiliation, duplicity, and duty. This is the type of movie you commit time and thought to, and there are far too few of them anymore. It is not a movie that clobbers you over the head with explosions and in-your-face ADHD storytelling, but rather a relaxed study of human behavior. If you've got the time and sensibility to devote, I highly recommend Lust, Caution.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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