WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS REVEALED

Group decides to target evil traitor. Innocent girl is forced to seduce him. He violently rapes her (which we are forced to watch). The evil guy is also revealed to be a sadisitic monster, treats her like a whore (she tells someone he f*cks her until she bleeds). She does not want to continue -wants the assasination to be over. Then 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. (are we supposed to believe she loved the sick bastard? Or was it really because it was a HUGE DIAMOND)
Evil bad guy escapes being killed and then rounds up all the conspiriters (including her) and they all die. The end.

What exactly was supposed to be the point of those 2.5 hours? We watched this poor woman whose family didn’t want her & whose friends only used her for their own ends – 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 for Tony Leung, but otherwise it was a HORRIBLE disappointment. I have watched every Ang Lee movie and enjoyed all of them to varying degrees (not so much the Civil War one). 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 pointless & miserable life.