Director: Ang Lee, 18, 2007

Stars: Tony Leung, Wei Tang

Rental/retail DVD

Only a director as revered as Lee could have shot a story about China as explicit and raw as this. The sex is brutal. The history is taboo. Leung is an informer in Shanghai in 1938 who specialises in hunting down Chinese resistance fighters for the occupying Japanese. He has played many inscrutable parts, but the menace he generates simply by being well dressed and polite is why this film is so gripping.

The clever distraction is a young assassin, played brilliantly by Tang. Their hardcore yoga makes Brokeback Mountain look like interval drinks. The intensity of the sex is more honest than the secrets they try to hide. At more than two and a half hours the film could shed half a dozen slices of overdressed drama. But every layer tells a guilty story.

DVD extras: Documentary

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