My 2 cents.

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2001)

I am mostly in agreement with Ranma. (See a previous comment).
On the point of the lack of or thinness of the plot, based on the sub-titles alone can be seem to be true. For Westerners who can only understand the movie by reading the sub-titles, this is not your fault.
Being a native Mandarin speaker, I can assure anyone that the story is richer and deeper than the sub-titles suggest.
Often 3 or 4 lines of dialogue in Mandarin are condensed into one short sentence in English. This often fails to convey most of the nuance or depth of the conversation. Bits and pieces of information are sometimes neglected!! Modern day one liners are used in abundance adding to the seeming lack of depth.
A good movie but not perfect. A little more time spent during the writing of the script or in the selection of sub-titles could have resulted in a far superior work.
However, Ang Lee and his team fell short only by thaaaaat much!