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The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

Thriller · Mystery · Crime · 2004

A cop's desire for love gets in the way of his job and his professional life. Secret love affairs begin to dangerously collide as he gets assigned to a new homicide case.

Movie details

The Scarlet Letter

“Sex. Lies. Murder.”

2004 Thriller · Mystery · Crime 1h 55m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.3 / 10

1.3K votes

TMDB

6.4 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A cop's desire for love gets in the way of his job and his professional life. Secret love affairs begin to dangerously collide as he gets assigned to a new homicide case.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Scarlet Letter?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Kiss Me Deadly

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One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

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The Infernal Machine

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Reclusive and controversial author Bruce Cogburn is drawn out of hiding by an obsessive fan, forcing the novelist to confront a past that he thought he could escape, and to account for events set in motion by his bestseller decades earlier. Cogburn's search for who is behind the manipulation and mental torment he encounters leads to an emotional roller-coaster ride full of fear and danger, where things are not always as clear as they seem to be, and where past deeds can have dire consequences.

Cruising

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Crime · 1980

When New York is caught in the grip of a sadistic serial killer who preys on patrons of the city's underground bars, rookie cop Steve Burns infiltrates the S&M subculture to try and lure him out of the shadows.

The Chaser

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Kiss the Girls

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8MM

8MM

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A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, he relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town PI.

Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Byun Hyuk

Written by

Kang Hyun-joo · Byun Hyuk

Han Suk-kyu

Han Suk-kyu

Lee Ki-hoon

Lee Eun-ju

Lee Eun-ju

Choi Ga-hee

Sung Hyun-ah

Sung Hyun-ah

Ji Kyung-hee

Uhm Ji-won

Uhm Ji-won

Han Su-hyun

Kim Jin-geun

Kim Jin-geun

Jung Myung-sik

Choi Gyu-hwan

Choi Gyu-hwan

Detective Choi

Do Yong-gu

Do Yong-gu

President Han

Court is in session

Put The Scarlet Letter on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.