Synopsis
During World War II, a secret agent must seduce then assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.
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Cast
- Tony Leung Chiu-waiMr. Yee
- Tang WeiWong Chia Chi / Mrs. Mak
- Joan ChenMrs. Yee
- Leehom WangKuang Yu Min
- Tou Tsung-HuaOld Wu
- Jacqueline Zhu Zhi-YingLai Shu Jin
- Ven KaoHuang Lei
- Lawrence KoLiang Jun Sheng
- Johnson Yuen Tak-CheungAuyang Ling Wen / Mr. Mak
- Chin Ka-LokCho
- 100
TV Guide Magazine
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. - 88
ReelViews
The sex is REALLY hot. Not hardcore pornographic (at least by my definition of the term) but close. - 88
Rolling Stone
Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break. - 70
New York Magazine (Vulture)
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. - 67
Christian Science Monitor
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. - 63
Premiere
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. - 58
Entertainment Weekly
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. - 50
Village Voice
Ang Lee's latest foray into forbidden love is as monotonous and disaffecting as "Brokeback Mountain" was gripping and immediate.