What I loved most: Norah Jones's singing in soundtarck

What I really hated: Most every other aspect

No getting around it, this is a failure. If one weren't more familiar with Wong Kar-Wei's oeuvre, this film might be easily dismissed. Even so, it is difficult to find much to admire in a film that suffers so much from a tin ear (how else to explain the tentative, stilted line readings of Norah Jones, this especially, as juxtaposed against the exuberance cajoled out of both Jude Law and Rachel Weisz?) Mr. Wong, directing in a language that is neither his native tongue, nor one that he demonstrates an easy alliance with, is on very thin territory here. With "2046", it became clearer that the laconic text and over-emphasis on surface, envelopes pushed to great effect with "Happy Together" and "In the Mood For Love" were in danger of becoming crutches resorted to in the absence of an understanding of how intricacies in relationships might be convincingly depicted. The two aforementioned films benefit enormously from the narrow lens of the periscope utilized in examination of layers artfully peeled back to nudge the story towards poignant conclusions that, when they arrive, manage to do so with the excruciating imprimateur of inevitability. In this movie, as with "2046", the weight of the forcibly threaded storyline strains the director's focus. Until it is that he becomes better versed in the idiomatic aspect of the English language, it appears that Mr. Wong operates with no serviceable template by which to gage the effects, and to this end, the consequences, on screen, of recklessly calling into duty the American landscape. Amidst this, Ms. Jones singing, interspersed in a soundtrack that nonetheless fails to advance the script, remains lovely and affecting, the one aspect of this ill-conceived venture likely to emerge unscathed, in any thoughtful analysis of the proceedings.