What a difference a great script makes! As socially slanted as his later work, and packed with interesting characterizations, The Lady in Red is about the only post-Bonnie & Clyde rural gangster yarn (besides perhaps The Moonshine War) with more to peddle than guns and sex. Sayles' characters are very likeable; Pamela Sue Martin makes a fine role out of what in other hands would be a demeaning Big Doll House bimbo. Robert Conrad is nothing special but more than adequate, while Louise Fletcher makes the traditional Lady in Red character very compelling. There are a host of nice performances, big and small, orbiting around Pamela Sue ... it just plays fine.

Depression-era crime movies either go for dumb thrills, or impose social theories on the period. Sayles combines both approaches with taste and restraint. The gunfights are brief and brutal, and even when making political points, Sayles' characters never become exponents of causes or mouthpieces for author's messages.

This is perhaps the best film l've seen for explaining corruption in the thirties - why people would identify with and champion cheap thieves, like Pretty Boy Floyd, over the cops. Polly's story is a rather lurid exposé of practices in the dime-a-dance racket, and gets very explicit when showing how a sportin' house operates. Sayles always has a very pronounced, very liberal social agenda, and creates a credible world where every opportunity open to an honest soul is another hopeless pit of exploitation. The sewing sweatshop is intolerable, and standing up for what's right lands Polly in a prison hell where even she realizes that the only way out is to become a prostitute. The prisons are run by greedy monsters, the cops are on the take and the feds care about nothing except their newspaper headlines. Anna Sage isn't very likeable, until we hear of her past experience as an immigrant, pulled off a boat from Eastern Europe directly into a prostitution ring. So much for sentimental valentines to Ellis Island. Under these circumstances it's no problem at all to root for Polly and her eventual one-woman crime wave.

When it comes to John Dillinger, Sayles very adroitly shuffles the deck of known facts. The actual 'Lady in Red' turns out to be not Anna Sage but the clueless, duped Polly. Interestingly, Louise Fletcher played the Black Widow character in Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, one of her first films. What's implied there about a woman willing to fink on friends is here fully elaborated. We don't blame Anna in the slightest, and Polly doesn't much either.

Sayles pulls in several pleasing plot surprises that keep the story from becoming a downer. If you can stand the crudity in the brothel sequences, the ending isn't at all depressing. The hit man character played by an undcredited Robert Forster figures nicely in a good twist, that's almost remindful of Sayles' Matewan.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, The Lady in Red rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: AlphaPak case
Reviewed: May 17, 2002