September 28, 2007 -- BY the time I got to the sexu ally explicit scenes in "Lust, Caution" that earned Ang Lee's disappointing follow-up to "Brokeback Mountain" an NC-17 rating, 90 minutes had elapsed and I was struggling to stay awake.
Set on meticulous sound-stage re-creations of World War II Shanghai and Hong Kong, "Lust, Caution" is an interminable, suspense- and chemistry-free adaptation of a very short Eileen Chang story about a young resistance fighter who becomes the mistress of a Japanese collaborator.
The story line is very reminiscent of Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book," but Lee utterly lacks Verhoeven's skill at staging action (witness "The Hulk") and favors the sort of languid pacing that almost did in even "Brokeback Mountain."
The beautiful Tang Wei plays Wang Jiazhi, a college drama student who is recruited to seduce Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), the ultra-cautious head of the secret service working with the Japanese occupiers.
Audiences risk being lulled to sleep by a full 1½ hours' worth of false starts and flashbacks. Finally, Wang - posing as the wife of a businessman, has insinuated herself into the mah-jongg circle of Yee's wife (Joan Chen) - manages to finally seduce him.
Wang's goal is to lure Yee out in the open, so a group of guerillas led by her sort-of ex-boyfriend (played by U.S.-born pop star Wang Leehom) can assassinate Yee.
Unfortunately, Lee and his screenwriters (Wang Hui-Ling and Lee's longtime collaborator James Schamus) have turned out the sort of lumbering movie where you'll figure out what's going to happen at least half an hour before it does.
That doesn't do much for suspense, and there is little sense of danger despite a scene in which resistance fighters brutally stab a traitor to death.
The performances - even by Leung, the suave, accomplished star of Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" and "In the Mood for Love" - are so flat that you don't really much care what happens to anybody.
Though Leung and Wei go full frontal for some extremely acrobatic sadomasochistic sex scenes, they're such ciphers, their encounters lack any genuine heat.
"Lust, Caution" could have done with a lot more lust and a lot less caution.
LUST, CAUTION
* 1/2
Unthrilling erotic thriller.
Running time: 157 minutes. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Rated NC-17 (explicit sadomasochistic sex, nudity). At the Lincoln Plaza, Broadway and 62nd Street.