This is one remake we could very well have lived without. When I watched the original Cape Fear for the first time, it was in a way one of the scariest movies I had ever seen. I was a teenage girl at the time and it was quite a shocking experience to feel attracted to the masculine magnetism of Robert Mitchum as Max Cady while knowing his character was a dangerous violent rapist. It got me thinking whether I would be smart and strong enough not to play with fire if I came face to face with somebody oozing the same kind of overwhelming sexiness as Robert Mitchum in this movie, even if I felt at the same time the hidden menace emanating from him, like from Mitchum's Max Cady in every scene. I didn't know the answer to that question and it scared the hell out of me.
The original was scary, because it brought the menace so close psychologically. You didn't know where Max Cady was going to show up, in the big chase scene you didn't know for sure whether it was really Cady or just somebody harmless after the girl and you didn't know whether he was going to find his way to the family in their hideaway and how he'd find them.
The remake on the other hand was bad from the start. The first scene with overly tattooed and crazy-eyed Robert De Niro training in his cell already got me thinking that the movie was going to go from bad to worse. De Niro's Max Cady was a one-dimensional overly obviously crazy and dangerous guy with little or no sex appeal. He was so over the top stereotyped cartoon bad guy that it was laughable, not menacing. And what's with the hanging under the car scene? Can a scene be any more unnecessary than that? A huge part of the scariness of scary movies is that you don't know how and where the monster will appear. And Scorsese tells us exactly how the bogeyman gets to the hideaway. The mistake of telling how the bad guy gets to the hideaway could still have been excusable if the movie makers hadn't chosen such an unrealistic way of transportation for Max Cady. I mean, hanging under the car for several miles? Are you kidding me? Did Scorsese really expect the viewers to buy into the concept?
Nick Nolte and his family were all unlikeable people, so I found myself wondering why I should sympathize with those people. I'm not a big fan of Juliette Lewis anyway and with her voluntary flirting with the unattractive De Niro and her dysfunctional family relationships it was difficult to believe that her father would be willing to go to extremes to protect her. No, it felt like it wasn't about protecting the family, it was a pissing contest between Nolte and De Niro, about which guy was the toughest and baddest. Nolte cared less about keeping his daughter and wife safe from a violent rapist than he cared about one-upping De Niro by making sure he wouldn't get to mess with what was Nolte's.
All in all, a movie not worth all the hype it got when released.
The original was scary, because it brought the menace so close psychologically. You didn't know where Max Cady was going to show up, in the big chase scene you didn't know for sure whether it was really Cady or just somebody harmless after the girl and you didn't know whether he was going to find his way to the family in their hideaway and how he'd find them.
The remake on the other hand was bad from the start. The first scene with overly tattooed and crazy-eyed Robert De Niro training in his cell already got me thinking that the movie was going to go from bad to worse. De Niro's Max Cady was a one-dimensional overly obviously crazy and dangerous guy with little or no sex appeal. He was so over the top stereotyped cartoon bad guy that it was laughable, not menacing. And what's with the hanging under the car scene? Can a scene be any more unnecessary than that? A huge part of the scariness of scary movies is that you don't know how and where the monster will appear. And Scorsese tells us exactly how the bogeyman gets to the hideaway. The mistake of telling how the bad guy gets to the hideaway could still have been excusable if the movie makers hadn't chosen such an unrealistic way of transportation for Max Cady. I mean, hanging under the car for several miles? Are you kidding me? Did Scorsese really expect the viewers to buy into the concept?
Nick Nolte and his family were all unlikeable people, so I found myself wondering why I should sympathize with those people. I'm not a big fan of Juliette Lewis anyway and with her voluntary flirting with the unattractive De Niro and her dysfunctional family relationships it was difficult to believe that her father would be willing to go to extremes to protect her. No, it felt like it wasn't about protecting the family, it was a pissing contest between Nolte and De Niro, about which guy was the toughest and baddest. Nolte cared less about keeping his daughter and wife safe from a violent rapist than he cared about one-upping De Niro by making sure he wouldn't get to mess with what was Nolte's.
All in all, a movie not worth all the hype it got when released.