Lust, Caution
Focus Features | Release Date: September 28, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
12
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TV Guide MagazineKen 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. Read full review
90
SlateDana 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. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The sex is REALLY hot. Not hardcore pornographic (at least by my definition of the term) but close. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven 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. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon Wise
A beautifully rendered, long, drawn-out but ultimately very satisfying story of betrayal and revenge in an uneasy setting of wartime paranoia. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth 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. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson 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." Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia 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. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack 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.
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger 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. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick 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. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The film is never less than beautiful, but it's never truly absorbing. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)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. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe 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. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter 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. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Conceptually, Lust, Caution has been thoroughly thought-through, down to every lipstick stain Wei leaves on her teacups. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean 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. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
There's too much caution and not enough lust. Read full review
63
PremiereHoward 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. Read full review
63
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. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony 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. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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. Read full review
58
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Tang Wei brings a terrible and awe-inspiring purity to an impure character. Read full review
50
Village VoiceRobert Wilonsky
Ang Lee's latest foray into forbidden love is as monotonous and disaffecting as "Brokeback Mountain" was gripping and immediate. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterRay 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. Read full review
50
VarietyDerek 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. Read full review
50
NewsweekDavid Ansen
There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael 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. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The bursts of sex and violence that earned this picture an NC-17 rating offer only temporary respite from the encroaching dullness. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy 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. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla 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. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It’s one of the most cautious readings of lust ever put to film. Read full review
38
New York PostLou Lumenick
Lust, Caution could have done with a lot more lust and a lot less caution. Read full review
30
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The sex scenes -- intense, affecting and emotionally raw -- are the best thing about this frustratingly limp movie. Read full review
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