Cape Fear (1991)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
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What critics compared Cape Fear to
"Think Cape Fear or Falling Down but with high octane B-movie goodness feeding its engine"…
Tom is first cousin to Max Cady of both versions of the classic crime thriller “Cape Fear.”
The obvious parallels to this are those men who’ve been pushed to the limit and have decided to see what’s on the other side – the likes of Michael Douglas in Falling Down and Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.
Although Mr. Thompson, whose other credits included "The Guns of Navarone" and "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," moved the first "Cape Fear" along in simple, linear fashion, Mr. Scorsese did not rely heavily upon the original.
Under the workmanlike direction of J. Lee Thompson (“Cape Fear,” 1961) from the script by producer Carl Foreman, which is based on the best-seller by Alistair MacLean, it becomes your typical crowd pleasing war film that questions wartime heroics but exploits their actions as part of its draw.
Although Mr. Thompson, whose other credits included "The Guns of Navarone" and "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," moved the first "Cape Fear" along in simple, linear fashion, Mr. Scorsese did not rely heavily upon the original.
Maybe when McNaughton inserts his first close-up of a just-sealed bullet wound, his thirtieth shot of Denise Richards' nipples, or his plagiaristic carbon-copying of the rope-in-the-water shot from Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear, a Southern-fried suspense film as rigorous and invigorating as this one is lifeless.
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After that radio conversation, the movie abruptly drops its exploration of cowardice and masculinity and focuses on the action, ultimately putting it slightly below similar movies like Martin Scorsese’s 1991 “Cape Fear” or David Cronenberg’s 2005 “A History of Violence.”
Imagine a remake of Cape Fear shot like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, with Max Cady recast as a child, and you’ll have some idea of the strangeness of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Imagine Sophie’s Choice about to meet The Shining, approaching from either side of Cape Fear.
“Elle” hawks back to films like “Cape Fear” from Martin Scorsese or “Wild Things” from John McNaughton – stylistically ravaging, but hypnotically inscrutable in its narrative defenses.
Like so many movie stalkers before him Gordo is relentless and clever (think of him as a nerdy version of Robert de Niro’s Max in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear from 1991 and you have a sense of the chill factor Edgerton hits.)
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I want to go home,” Faith repeats again and again, as Alien whispers in her ear and caresses her cheek, like De Niro seducing Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear.
This is a thriller, so Hitchcock is the obvious reference point (as he was in "Cape Fear").
Instead, he seems to be out to explore the conventions of the horror genre, as in Cape Fear, and to pay homage to his heroes while coming up with a few new tricks.
In tackling Shutter Island , only his second thriller since the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, Martin Scorsese, who is a master artist in the eyes of even the most jaded cynic, takes a type of story familiar to all of us and dresses its decidedly ghoulish Hitchcockian bones in something gossamer and graceful.
Martin Scorseses "Shutter Island" is the most bizarrely portentous and overemphatic Hollywood thriller Ive seen since, well, Martin Scorseses "Cape Fear."
Back in 1991, when Martin Scorsese made Cape Fear, he figured out how to direct an unabashed commercial thriller that still had the flavor of his obsessions.
“Shutter Island,” Scorsese's first attempt at terror since 1991's “Cape Fear” and Hollywood's latest adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”), was set for release in October but pushed back to strengthen Paramount’s 2010 schedule.