Denis Ghirardello

Did not like this movie. Script and direction leave a lot to be desired not to talk about the pacing of the whole thing...boring!

Pasolini's grotesque portrayal of power and sex drawn from De Sade's work can be disturbing though thought provoking. Pasolini himself was a bit of a contradiction as while exposing the evils of power/consumerism and of a society where personal freedom was slowly but inevitably eroded he himself was using his status/money to pay those street boys to satisfy his own sexual appetites.

Being acquainted with the subject I found this movie very interesting. Clearly Scorsese does not cut corners to only appease the "young" viewers in terms of pacing his movie (as some earlier comments show). Japan's hidden Christians being investigated by an Inquisitor who himself had been one before and the Jesuit priest (Liam Neeson)turned into Inquisitor and all the question marks about religion faith power make this film all the more engagig.