Poll Position: Cape Fear (1991)

Last week we made a poll for various Martin Scorsese directed movies, and of all the movies in the poll you choose Cape Fear for us to review today. It won by quite a margin so I don't think anyone will fault me for raising my hopes for this. It stars Robert De Niro as a newly released prison inmate Max Cady, and Nick Nolte as the lawyer who once defended him. Clearly the case was lost and now Cady is out to prove a point. As he says to his ex-lawyer Sam, "You're gonna learn about loss." So did Cape Fear live up to all those votes, or did I learn that I lost 2 hours of my day? Hit the jump to find out!


The story in Cape Fear is pretty standard. The ex-con is pissed he went to jail and now he's out to get what he feels is justice. Cady believes his lawyer Sam didn't represent him to the fullest of his abilities and thus was the cause for having him sent to jail for 14 years on a rape charge. He proceeds to strip Sam's life of everything he cares about eventually targeting his family directly. Part of me was a little bored by the story, it seems like it's been done to death. There's also the fact that this is a remake of a 1962 movie by the same name which starred Gregory Peck as Sam.

De Niro as Max Cady

I did like how everything that Cady did was always right on the edge of the law so he couldn't get in trouble. Like sitting on the wall to their property at night. Can't get charged with trespassing if you don't cross the property line! It was also interesting when it's revealed that Cady couldn't read when they first went to trial, but during the course of his 14 years behind bars, he's not only taught himself to read, but became extremely well read and almost scholarly. Unfortunately, as interesting as Cady's character was, I found the lawyer Sam to be equally uninteresting. I found him so unlikable that I was basically cheering for Cady, even though Sam is the victim here. I'm almost curious to see the original movie to see how the characters come across there. I have a suspicion that this role reversal of sorts is Scorsese's doing to put a bit of a twist on the movie. Too bad it didn't work for me.

As a quick side note though, it was fun to see Gregory Peck show up in a small cameo halfway into the movie as another lawyer. When he came on screen, it was before I knew he starred in the original. But it was still cool to see him show up since you might remember he was also the lawyer in To Kill A Mockingbird which I quite liked.

I've been painting a pretty grim picture for the film, but I want to clarify that the first 3/4 of the movie is when Cady is doing all his outsmarting and driving Sam mad with paranoia. All of which I enjoyed, and even if it was a bit predictable, it was still really good. Sadly this is where the movie actually does get grim and becomes just a by the books thriller movie. The very last scene in particular I didn't enjoy and when some rocks get involved, it pretty much ruined the whole movie for me. I'm sorry to all those that like this movie, but I thought the whole thing was just stupid. And while I'm at it, I hated the "invert the whole screen into wacky colors" effect which could have been totally left out and added nothing to the movie as far as I'm concerned.

In the end I'm left with a movie I was really enjoying, which utterly tanked in the last half-hour for me. The whole role reversal spin is thrown out the window and suddenly I'm supposed to care about the lawyer I've been made to dislike the whole movie? It probably also doesn't help that I found the wife and daughter to be utterly annoying too I guess. I wish I had a better time with it, I know a lot of people picked this to win. Hopefully Puneet will enjoy it more than I did. Sorry folks.