Max Cady, a violent and very dangerous man, has just been released from prison after serving sixteen years for rape and has moved to the city where his old lawyer Sam Bowden and his entire family live. Initially, he tries to make friends with the lawyer, but in reality, his intentions go far beyond friendship. He is convinced that the lawyer did not defend him properly during the trial, that he deliberately omitted details about his case to get him behind bars. With hatred in his blood, Cady sets up a diabolical plan to torment Sam and his family.
Let's start from the beginning.
It was 1962 when Lee Thompson, director of the film "The Guns of Navarone," based on the book "The Executioners" by John McDonalds, directed two cinema legends like Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, such powerful actors that they cannot fail to materialize in front of one's eyes when the word Actor is mentioned. The film was Cape Fear, still today a great example of suspense cinema. Thirty years later, here comes a cornerstone of modern cinema, perhaps the greatest director currently alive, author of absolute masterpieces such as "Taxi Driver" and "Goodfellas," who takes up the story of the criminal Max Cady and the persecuted lawyer Sam Bowden. Well yes, Martin Scorsese tackling his first remake, re-adapts the events originally told by Thompson and makes them his own, thanks to the unmistakable style that has made him famous. Extreme close-ups, fast editing alternated with long takes, swift tracking shots, and a cast that does its best to overshadow the predecessor film.
All this is "Cape Fear," the 1990s version of "Il promontorio della paura."
We were talking about the cast, so it seems right to start with the introductions: the Bowden couple is played by Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange (already an Oscar winner for "Tootsie"), two actors perfectly in the role of the family tormented by a past mistake. Illustrious cameos also for the original interpreters Peck and Mitchum, who could not miss the carousel of stars of the film. Did we forget someone? Of course.
The main reason why "Cape Fear" rightfully enters the list of films that cannot be missing from the video library of a true thriller lover is precisely the remaining part of the cast that has not yet been mentioned: Robert De Niro, who needs no introduction, and the (then) semi-unknown Juliette Lewis. On their shoulders, as on those of the mythological Atlas, rests the universe of the film.
The couple of actors plays respectively a maniac bordering on the demonic, a creature of evil who has no scruples in destroying everything that is dear to the lawyer who put him in jail years before, and an embarrassed sixteen-year-old, a lost child who has just entered the real world full of the desire to transgress but who still struggles to understand how evil it can be. The juxtaposition of these two characters, one the antithesis of the other, is the fuel that makes the film work. "Cape Fear," although a title of great respect, would not have left such a deep mark if Scorsese had chosen other protagonists.
The climax of the film is reached in a scene now entered in the Scorsese anthology, in the long dialogue between Cady and Danielle in the theater, a static scene that has such a force as to glue the viewer to the screen and reaches the peak of the acting climax of the couple of actors, both deservedly nominated for the Oscar.
But it is not only the cast that stands out in Scorsese's film. To frame the carousel of stars, the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker, a faithful collaborator of the director since the times of "Who's That Knocking at My Door?", could not be missing, which immediately becomes an essential element for the success of the film. Indeed, it gives the film an intense rhythm that accompanies the viewer from beginning to end without boring them.
All this is garnished with a chilling soundtrack, now famous, another cornerstone of the film.
The rest is a beautiful exercise in style, which has the flaw of exaggerating a bit too much in some parts, especially in the finale where De Niro brushes against omnipotence. But perhaps the whole thing is deliberately an exaggeration, starting from the (exaggeratedly) tattooed body of Max Cady that praises justice and his (exaggerated) desire for revenge for having spent years in prison. And as Cady rightly says in another important scene, "I am similar to God and God is similar to me! I am as great as God, He is as small as me! He cannot be above me, nor I below Him!"
Perhaps this is enough to justify the amplification of the finale.
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