I went to see Ang Lee's Lust, Caution last night.*
Ang Lee's the guy who did Brokeback Mountain, arguably the best movie adpated from a short story. If you have the story and own the video -- go back to the scene when Ennis (Heath Ledger) finds out Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is dead. Read the story again and then watch the scene. Grabe, ang galing. Mapapaiyak ka sa galing.
Ang Lee also made The Hulk. Arguably the worst movie adapted from a comic book. Not to appear repetitive, pero mapapaiyak ka sa kapangitan ng pelikulang ito.
Ok, so Ang Lee's not perfect. Even if he did make both Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger (think about the versatility of vision there for just one second).
Lust Caution was er... well... medjo bad. The set design was straight out of a high school play. In one scene, there was tarp behind the actors that showed scenery. I know the movie was set in the 1940's, but does that mean they have to to adopt film making techniques of that time? Apparently so. There was NO cinematography. The music was blah. (If you re-watch Brokeback, notice the score.)
The plot took forever to develop (the movie was 3 hours long, most of the story developed in the last 20 minutes; and it really wasn't worth the two and half hour wait, apart from the "bomba" scenes everyone talked about).
The only good things out of the 270 minute debaucle were the performances of Tony Leung, Joan Chen (she's even better with age) and the new girl Wei Tang. If these guys did not deliver the way they did, the film would have been a complete disaster. Their performances drove the whole production. They had no help from the rest of the crew (you know, the director, scriptwriter, cinematographer, gaffer, best boy, etc), although Wei Tang's make-up artist and seamstress are noteworthy.
Just think about Ang Lee's versatility na lang.
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*This movie "review" assumes you've seen the film. I refuse to go into the plot, the NC-17 rating and everything else everyone else has discussed out this movie.
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