The Scarlet Letter

You know you have a bad movie when Gary Oldman gives the best performance and Robert Duvall gives the worst, which is precisely the case in this latest — and most ridiculous — adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's oft-filmed "The Scarlet Letter."

As if it's a truth-in-advertising disclaimer, the opening credits declare that the script has "freely adapted" Hawthorne's novel. A major source of inspiration would also seem to be James Fenimore Cooper — or maybe just the movie version of "The Last of the Mohicans."

Instead of a morality tale about a conflicted woman undergoing a spritual crisis, however, screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart ("An Officer and a Gentleman," "The Blue Lagoon") has fashioned a sappy love story, retaining only the most basic elements of the book and adding a series of thin subplots. And director Roland Joffe ("The Killing Fields," "The Mission") gives the material such somber treatment that unintentional laughs are inevitable.

As the film opens, feminist-before-her-time Hester Prynne (played by a horribly miscast Demi Moore) arrives in Puritan New England with a chip on her shoulder. She's ready for a fight with the ruling elders and within seconds she offends both male authority figures and the women who support them.

It seems Hester has been sent ahead to this new settlement by her husband, Roger Prynne (Robert Duvall, whose first appearance is quite late in the film). She has been instructed to find a home and get things settled. But the locals are shocked when Hester sets up housekeeping alone in a beautiful cliffside cottage, where she employs indentured servants to help her plant crops and fix up the house.

One day, while gardening, Hester sees a ruby-red bird (which appears to be a canary with a dye job). She follows it into the woods and, to the strains of John Barry's overwhelming music (with assistance from a heavenly choir), Hester spies the Rev. Arthur Dimmes-dale, swimming nude in the river.

For Hester it's lust-at-first-sight, and before long she and the good reverend are exchanging leering glances during benign conversations. But they keep their distance until word comes that Hester's husband is presumed dead after a shipload of settlers is slaughtered by Indians.

Upon hearing the news, Hester and Arthur immediately confess their love for each another, which leads to a tempestuous sex scene in Hester's granary. Meanwhile, Hester's slave Mituba (Lisa Jolliff-Andoh), realizing her mistress will be occupied for awhile, decides to sneak into her bath, inviting the crimson canary indoors. And while Hester and Arthur frolic in piles of grain, Mituba symbolically wraps up her ritual by snuffing a candle in the water.