 |
|
|
|
Cape Fear (1991)
 email this review to a friend
Movie Review by Jarrod
March 13th, 2008
|  |
Martin Scorsese's remake of 'Cape Fear' takes a different approach to the material, and it also allows for a reinvention of the two main characters, Max Cady (Robert De Niro) and Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte). Cady is a psychopath, a rapist who spent 14 years in jail, and upon release he seeks to get revenge on Bowden, his defense attorney. Bowden is portrayed here as a deeply flawed man; his ethics are questionable; he deliberately hid a piece of evidence that may have well gotten Cady acquitted, or a much lighter sentence. And he apparently never bothered to handle Cady's appeals. Cady is certainly evil, but one might initially think that prison made him that way; few could possibly understand the hell he endured, least of all Bowden, and that is a point Cady makes again and again. He went in illiterate, but has since taught himself how to read, and he became surprisingly well-versed in legal matters, not to mention the Bible and the works of Henry Miller. He speaks with a slow southern drawl, and is heavily tattooed, the kind of guy many women would find strangely attractive, and he is not without his charms. Almost immediately, he is stalking Bowden and taunting him, but he never does anything he could be arrested for, not trespassing and not causing any physical harm either to Bowden or to his family. And speaking of family, Bowden's is dysfunctional. He and his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) have gone to counseling in the past, to address Sam's infidelity, which could very well flare up again with a young clerk. Their daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) was caught smoking pot and is now in summer school, a typical rebellious teen who often despises her parents.
Cady is a sexual predator who tries to seduce Danielle, in one creepy scene, he pretends to be her drama teacher and lures her into an empty, isolated theater, where he engages her in conversation and seems to understand her better than anyone else; he kisses her, but it never goes beyond that point. Cady's last victim was a 16-year-old girl he savagely raped and assaulted; Sam knows this, and is uniquely disturbed about the possibility that Cady could come after Danielle, who is roughly the same age. Cady is capable of alarming brutality, but wants only to try and push Sam's buttons, to push him over the edge so Sam will do something criminal. Sam finds no help from the cops (one of whom is played by Robert Mitchum), so he goes to a private investigator named Kersek (Joe Don Baker), who does offer to help him, by monitoring Cady and even encouraging Sam to hire some hitmen to put Max in the hospital, a plan that backfires. After this incident, Cady hires Lee Heller (Gregory Peck, in authoritative Atticus Finch mode), a prestigious lawyer, to slap Sam with a restraining order and enter a motion to get him disbarred. It all comes to head in the climactic showdown on the Bowden houseboat, on a stormy tumultuous river, with Cady essentially hoping to have Sam watch as he rapes Danielle and Leigh.
For the most part, Scorsese is faithful to the original, and keeps in touch with its nature as a superb psychological thriller, and Robert De Niro is terrific as Max Cady, in some ways better than Robert Mitchum, but he does make him more of a monster. De Niro earned an Oscar nomination for this performance. Nolte also is excellent, less of a hero that Gregory Peck, but incidentally more complex and interesting as a result. Lange and Lewis are very effective. The houseboat sequence is riveting and intense, expertly edited by the always-reliable Thelma Schoonmaker. Freddie Francis's cinematography is consistently moody and atmospheric. Overall, this 'Cape Fear' is more or less on par with the first one.
email this review to a friend
Comment on this Review:
Sorry, you must be a member to add comments to reviews.
Join or Login. |
 | Andy
Mar 14, 2008 1:29 AM
| |
| I actually like the original a lot more. I think having Peck and his family be the "great American family" made the horror of Max Cady more effective. Scorsese is the master at having mult-layered characters, but the simplicity of the original is a large part of what made it so good. |
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS
|
