Zhou Yu de huo che

It's a terrific film because each of the characters is so fiercely felt.

Seems at once overwhelmingly romantic and elliptical, yet all the while it has been building to a conclusion that is surprisingly affecting in the jolt of recognition it elicits.

Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.

These are not the marks of true cinema; they're the makings of a droopy karaoke video.

Before dismissing Zhou Yu's Train as the over-conceived, over-edited, under-written perfume ad that it is, the following must be said: It's great to see Gong Li onscreen again.

Comes to seem less a movie than a memory of movies -- or, at worst, a commercial Frankenstein's monster, sewn together to fill a perceived gap in the market.

Devolves from opaque mystery into boring melodramatics and incoherent contrivances.