Lust, Caution: Critic Reviews

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.

Lust, Caution is a sleepy, musty period drama about wartime maneuvers and bedroom calisthenics, and the misguided use of a solid director.

For his sheer muscular verve and ambition, Lee deserves a standing ovation.

There is deception, suspicion and self-delusion, but it all seems rendered at arm's length, despite the consummate artistry of the filmmaking.

In a film where casting is a vital component in the edgy equation, Leung and Tang make a picturesque and dramatically compelling couple.

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.

...it's amazing how something so cold is expected to generate so much heat.

There is plenty of lust exercised in the athletic, don't-try-this-at-home sex scenes between Hong Kong star Tony Leung and the stunning Chinese newcomer Wei Tang.

A freeze-dried story has been only partially defrosted.

A quietly compelling drama of hidden desperation and fierce passions.

Like Lee's other films, Lust, Caution grows out of a tension between essence and form -- between a person's emotions and the role he or she must play.

By the time [Lee] gets to the lust, it is too late to throw caution to the winds.

The nature of the sex is Lee's subject, and he is too honest to suppress that.

This is one of the major disappointments of the film-going year.

A rich, beautifully detailed espionage thriller that captures the bygone days of Shanghai -- and 1940s Hollywood noirs' romantic evocations of same.

It's 158 minutes long, and worth every languorous second.

Mixing a stately pace with bursts of raw violence and blunt eroticism, Lust, Caution indeed deftly blends those two attitudes.

It's positively amazing how boring so much sex can be when it subs for character development and compelling narrative.

Lust, Caution is one of the few honestly observant political films, totally devoid of retrospective feel-good propaganda.

Too much caution and too little lust.

I was struggling to stay awake.

It's a masterpiece of tangled allegiances and corrupted innocence, equating sexual intimacy with the search for a person's soul. There's no guarantee the discovery will bring joy.

Intellectually, emotionally, Lust, Caution is all palette and no canvas -- it's an epic on a postage stamp.

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