MAJOR SPOILERS:
Group decides to target evil traitor. Innocent girl forced to seduce him. He violently rapes her (which we are forced to watch). He's shown to be a sadisitic control freak, treats her like a whore, she tells how he f*cks her until she bleeds and uses rough sex to dominate her.
She does not want to continue in her act - wants the assassination done with. You see her SUFFERING through the (ANYTHING BUT erotic!) sex by staring at a gun she could use to kill him. Then suddenly evil bad guy buys her a GIANT SHINY DIAMOND.... and apparently that overcomes all patriotism, pride or self-esteem... so she tells him to run away. (we we supposed to believe she loved him???? Or was it really because it was a HUGE DIAMOND? Or did he finally just break her?) Evil bad guy escapes being killed and then rounds up all the conspirators in the group and they all die (including her). The end.
So what exactly was the point of those 2.5 hours? We watched this poor woman whose family didn't want her & whose friends only used her - have sex and play mahojng and that's pretty much it.
It gets 1 star for portraying old Shanghai which I enjoy seeing (my grandparents lived there) and 1 Tony Leung but otherwise it was a HORRIBLE disappointment. I have watched every Ang Lee movie and enjoyed all of them to varying degrees (the Civil War one wasn't so good). I expected much better from a great director, great actors and even the movie had great potential! So I am especially angry to have sat through that pointless waste of my time and supposedly 4 years of this woman's life.
Group decides to target evil traitor. Innocent girl forced to seduce him. He violently rapes her (which we are forced to watch). He's shown to be a sadisitic control freak, treats her like a whore, she tells how he f*cks her until she bleeds and uses rough sex to dominate her.
She does not want to continue in her act - wants the assassination done with. You see her SUFFERING through the (ANYTHING BUT erotic!) sex by staring at a gun she could use to kill him. Then suddenly evil bad guy buys her a GIANT SHINY DIAMOND.... and apparently that overcomes all patriotism, pride or self-esteem... so she tells him to run away. (we we supposed to believe she loved him???? Or was it really because it was a HUGE DIAMOND? Or did he finally just break her?) Evil bad guy escapes being killed and then rounds up all the conspirators in the group and they all die (including her). The end.
So what exactly was the point of those 2.5 hours? We watched this poor woman whose family didn't want her & whose friends only used her - have sex and play mahojng and that's pretty much it.
It gets 1 star for portraying old Shanghai which I enjoy seeing (my grandparents lived there) and 1 Tony Leung but otherwise it was a HORRIBLE disappointment. I have watched every Ang Lee movie and enjoyed all of them to varying degrees (the Civil War one wasn't so good). I expected much better from a great director, great actors and even the movie had great potential! So I am especially angry to have sat through that pointless waste of my time and supposedly 4 years of this woman's life.