parameswaranrajendran
Cape Fear (1991) - The movie directed by Martin Scorsese and acted by Robert De Niro as this is their next film after Goodfellas (1990). This film is a remake of the same titled film in 1962. The plot journey is quite slower in the first half but things getting interested when then complex started with the character of Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is looking for his revenge. I am very impressed with Robert De Niro performance since Godfather II (1974) & Taxi Driver (1976). In this film, he is fully transformed himself to a psychopath murderer. Overall, I will give 7/10 for this crime, thriller and drama.
J Besser
This is how Scorsese follows up Goodfellas? Shame on him. It's so bad... I remember back then Scorsese said that DeNiro talked him into making this movie. Well Martin, if Robert was going to jump off a bridge...? Come on, friendship only goes so far. The script is just so dumb. Scorsese was doomed from the start. What's really shocking is that he managed to get pretty bad performances from this usually rock solid cast. The only ones that came off well are Peck and Mitchum (sorry Joe Don). He takes the great (and sexy) Jessica Lange and turns her a shrill, screaming annoyance. Nolte, strong movie bad ass, is turned into a weak (most of the time), dumb (almost all the time) movie bad ass. And legendary DeNiro is somehow over-the-top and uninteresting at the same time. He only has one really good scene. His accent alternates from okay to silly but always remains distracting. The movie is also too mean. I'm fine with violence in movies (only) but meanness is a huge turn off. I don't like having my nose rubbed in it. On the bright side, the last half hour or so is laugh out loud bad. Unbelievably bad considering the giant talents involved in this one. I don't remember how I felt about it 27 years ago. I think it wasn't one of my favorites but I don't remember thinking it was that bad. But now, wow, it's a borderline camp classic.
feakes
They should not have bothered. Robert De niro goes over the top chewing the scenery and over acting. His Max Cady while demented and seemingly inhuman isn't the scary menace of the original . Robert Mitchum endowed his Max Cady with a human anger and his Cady was human. and all the more believable. Mitchum gave his Cady an intelligence that shone thru. While Deniro only hints at his Cady's intellect.the movie only bares a passing glance to the original and quickly dissolves into parody. Juliette Lewis portrays Danni as a spoiled angry disrespectful teen and nick nolte portrays Sam as border line mentally challenged. And Jessica Lange comes off the worst as her Leigh comes off as a shrew.Either way by the end which was too over the top I no longer cared what happened. Cape Fear deserves another remake because it shouldn't be remembered for this one and give it to a director that wants to do it and stars that want to actually do it and understand the script first.
seymourblack-1
To be successful, any remake of an old movie needs to establish an identity of its own. This revamp of "Cape Fear" (1962) achieves this by being a colourful widescreen production in which dramatic camera angles, extreme close-ups and a distinctive style of editing, contribute to a hyped-up sense of drama and danger that prevails throughout the whole movie. Its plot about a violent ex-con who, after being released from prison, decides to take revenge on his defence attorney, follows a very similar course to the original, but instead of being a straightforward story of good versus evil, it becomes slightly more complex because of significant changes that are made to the characters of the lawyer and his family.Saul Bass' opening credits, Bernard Herrman's original 1962 score (reworked by Elmer Bernstein) and some other striking visual techniques, make the introduction to this movie very Hitchcockian and in a nod to the original film, three of its stars, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck and Martin Balsam, are all featured in significant cameo roles.After having served 14 years in prison, Max Cady (Robert De Niro) travels to New Essex, North Carolina to take revenge on Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), the public defender who'd represented him on the rape charge which led to his imprisonment. Cady, who was illiterate at the time of the trial, spent his years in prison learning to read (literature, philosophy, law and the bible) and having discovered that Bowden had withheld information at his trial (which could possibly have won him an acquittal), blames his lawyer for his incarceration and the loss of 14 years of his life. He initially harasses Bowden and his family in fairly subtle ways that don't risk him getting into trouble with the police and it soon becomes clear that his bete noire is getting rattled.Bowden, who is now a partner in a private practice, had managed to get Cady's charge reduced from rape to criminal battery but had chosen not to divulge information he had about the victim's promiscuity because after having seen the extent of her injuries, he'd decided that Cady's crime really shouldn't go unpunished. As well as being unprofessional, Bowden is also a serial adulterer whose dysfunctional marriage has made his wife neurotic and caused his 15-year-old daughter to become troubled and insecure. As Cady's behaviour becomes increasingly threatening, Bowden turns to the police, a fellow attorney and a private investigator for help, but all of their efforts on his behalf prove to be futile because of Cady's cleverness at keeping his actions within certain boundaries. When the ex-con eventually goes beyond these limits, things change rapidly and lead to the story's final confrontation between the two men.The decision to make Bowden a flawed individual instead of the paragon of virtue that he was in the original movie, introduces some moral ambiguity into the plot and certain family dynamics which Cady is able to exploit for his own ends. Although these changes add some interesting and enjoyable new elements to the story, they do nothing to justify Cady's brutality or his misguided beliefs.Robert De Niro makes his character an extremely powerful presence throughout the whole movie. As Cady, he's convincingly sinister, diabolically vicious (when he sexually assaults one of Bowden's work colleagues) and incredibly creepy in a memorable scene that he shares with Juliette Lewis who also turns in a fantastic portrayal of Bowden's daughter. Nick Nolte shows all the anxiety, anger and frustration that Bowden feels during his ordeal as well as the overwhelming sense of guilt that haunts him because of the responsibility he feels for the terrifying experiences that his family get put through.Overall, the sheer vitality of this ramped-up remake together with some great acting, makes it worthwhile, riveting and very much, a thriller of its time.
