Review of The Scarlet Letter (1995) by Steve R — 14 Jun 2006

Not bad, but not great either. It took me a good twenty minutes to adjust to the style and content of the movie and after that, it was reasonably watchable. I watched it mainly for Gary Oldman who I think is a great actor and in that respect it delivered.

There are some subplots which seem really unnecessary in the context of the main story and Robert Duvall's character is such an arsehole (basically doing a Kurtz from 'Heart of Darkness'), not to mention the whole town is one I'd wanna blow up with a nuclear bomb.

I think the way its marketed is totally wrong - its really not erotic or at least thats only a small part of it. Theres also small unnecessary gore believe it or not, which I'm welcome to, but ultimately distracted from the real story.

Also the main sex scene is just weird - coldly lit and juxtaposed with a slave girl representing Demi Moore and a red robin as Gary Oldman. One question: why?!