Speaking in tongues

OK movie review time again, for my own edification and that, this time its Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, the classic thriller from 1962 starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.  The remake is naturally a more modern, violent and explicit movie, as it would be when directed by Martin Scorsese, but anyway here is the usual bit about the plot.

The film starts with Max Cady (Robert De Niro), a convict who has just been released from prison afer serving 14 years for rape, seeks out his lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) and looks for revenge for Sam having put Cady away behind bars.  Sam was his defence lawyer at the time back in Atlana in 1977, but during the case, on seeing what Cady did to his victim, a 16 year old girl, he decided to bury a report that came back saying the girl was promiscuous.  And had Sam let this report be used, it might have seen Cady get off with a lighter sentence or be released.  Of course Cady has since caught on to this, and that's his main reason he wants revenge, for the suffering and pain he endured in prison.  So Cady starts a series of incidents to intimidate and get at Sam and his family, this starts with the Bowden's dog being mysteriously poisoned.  Cady also meets with a girl, Lori (Illeana Douglas) who is a county court clerk, who works with Sam, whom he has been seeing behind his wife's back.  Cady although appears to hit it off with Lori when they meet in a bar, he soon takes her back to his apartment where he brutally beats and rapes her.  On hearing of the attack, Sam goes to hospital and talks to Lori, asking her to testify, but she refuses as she knows how the system works, and she doesn't want to explain herself to a jury in court about how she came to be in a bar with Cady and so on. 

After having no success with the police, Sam decides to hire a private eye, Claude Kersek (Joe Don Baker) to follow Cady and maybe catch him in the act, although ultimately Cady makes Kersek at a local diner, and Kersek confronts him and tells him to leave town, but Cady refuses.  Meanwhile Cady approaches Sam's daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) at school and tries to charm her around in his favour, in doing so he puts his hand around her, gets her to suck his thumb erotically, and he kisses her before leaving, Dani then panics and runs off.  Soon after Sam gets Kersek to hire some guys to do a "hospital" job on Cady, involving two pieces of pipe and a bicycle chain, however during the attack, Cady turns the tables and viciously beats them.  Cady then goes one better on Sam by hiring a top lawyer Lee Heller (Gregory Peck), who Sam shortly after the botched attack approaches to make an injunction on Cady, only to find that he was pipped to the post by his enemy.  In court it is revealed that Cady recorded a conversation between himself and Sam, as Sam threatened Cady to leave town or he will be hurting like he never dreamed.  As a result of the hearing, Cady gets a restraining order filed against Sam, and Lee petitions the ABA (American Bar Association) ethics comission to have Sam disbarred.

Sam now desparate turns to Kersek for help in trying to capture and kill Cady, Kersek suggests that Sam fake his flight out to his hearing, and instead steakout in the Bowden household for Cady to come in.  However Cady is one step ahead again, and mysteriously makes his way into the house where he kills Kersek and the house maid Graciella (Zully Montero) by garroting them with piano wire (which he had taken from the Bowden's piano, also mysteriously! What is this guy??? A ninja???! ;-).  Sam and his family then decide to flee to their houseboat and travel up to Cape Fear in hope of escaping Cady.  However tenacious as ever, Cady follows them to their location by strapping himself to the chassis of the Bowdens' car. And soon enough on the houseboat, Cady confronts them for the last time, intent on exacting his full revenge on Sam and his family. 

Most remakes of course fall flat on their face, but thankfully Cape Fear isn't one of them, with Martin Scorsese at the directorial helm, it certainly wouldn't do that.  I also actually prefer it to the original version, as I think the Bowden family in the original version of Cape Fear where a bit too goody goody and clean cut.  In the remake, they are a dysfunctional family, who have tried to make some amends, but Sam has had a past history of womanising, Leigh of course is the frustrated housewife and Dani is the shellshocked, lonely teenager.  It doesn't make for a particularly happy image of the American family, but it certainly makes it more interesting to watch than a clean cut cardboard cut out family.  What doesn't change so much of course is the depiction of Max Cady, as Robert De Niro plays in an not entirely similar but not disimilar way to Robert Mitchum, although Scorsese did say he use Mitchum's character from the Night of the Hunter as more of an influence.  As Cady in the remake is more like a demented preacher at times than just an ex-con, and he regularly quotes passages from the bible to Sam in their various meetings.  And by the end of the film Cady in his last moments (PLOT SPOILERSS ABOUND!!!) as he is about drown, with his leg handcuffed (or legcuffed??) to a part of the Bowden's crushed boat, he still babbles on, speaking in tongues, saying he will be "bound for the promised land".  Its the ultimate irony, that in Cady's eyes that he thinks he is some sort of angel sent to do God's work, and at the end of it all, he thinks he will go to heaven, despite his brutal violent nature.  Although if you think about it, in a strange way Cady was trying to save Sam from himself, with Lori for example, he exposed the fact he was seeing Lori behind his wife's back.  If Cady hadn't intervened, Sam's deception no doubt would have carried on, but its almost like Cady is the moral adjudacator who prevents it from carrying on.  It leads onto that bizzare but true line from Cady to Sam at one point when he says "You could say I'm here to save you".   

Performance wise of course there is plenty to like about Cape Fear, and while Robert De Niro doesn't exactly give one of his best performances, its not the type of film that calls for that, instead he makes Cady appears as be charming, devious and incredibly evil all at once.  Nick Nolte is very good as Sam Bowden, who is tormented by Cady right from the start, and at the start you are somewhat wary of his potential womanising ways, although he doesn't actually do anything with Lori other than play squash.  Jessica Lange is also fine as Leigh Bowden, Sam's long suffering wife, who at first appears to be on good terms with her husband, until Cady comes into their lives and turns them upside down.  Joe Don Baker also gives probably my favourite performance of the film as Kersek, the private investigator, who is quite cocky and self assured in his ability to catch Cady, he also delivers most of the film's best dialogue such as "I'm sorry about that, Sam, that son of a bitch could survive a pre-emptive nuclear strike!!".  And finally there is Juliette Lewis as Dani, which was her debut performance, and she is very impressive in the film, as she plays Danielle with a certain quirkiness and innocence.  But she is of course very much alone in her life, and she in unable to deal with her parents when they continually row with one another.  She also shares with De Niro one of the film's best scenes where Dani and Cady meet in the school theatre, where they discuss books such as Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, the pitfalls of adulthood and Cady almost tries to turn Dani against her father and nearly succeeds.

Scorsese himself provides a great relentless pace and he employs the use of many quick cuts and close ups, to convey the frantic nature of the film, and the anxiety the Bowdens are going through.  Although probably does overuse the negatives when we see for example Leigh lie in bed post coitius with Sam, and we see her nasal hair in the negative image!  But overall its another great technical film from Scorsese and you would expect nothing less.

And finally a little bit about the score, which of course was orignally composed by the late great Bernard Herrmann, which was re-orchestrated by Elmer Bernstein who does a terrific job with Hermann's already great score, and there are plenty of great passages in there to choose from.

Sooooo that's it for Cape Fear, which is a very worthy remake and if you haven't seen it, its definitely worth a swatch.