CAPE FEAR
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(sbb@panix.com)
The Phantom was pleased to see that the classic "psycho stalks innocent family" potboiler is alive and well in 1991; CAPE FEAR's 1962 plot still creaks like a porch swing in the wind and its dialogue is still as wooden as the porch itself, but with his very up-to-date remake, Martin Scorsese has done for the thriller what Brian DePalma did for gangster films with his remake of SCARFACE: he's made a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, fairly scary, and very enjoyable film that gives its audience exactly what it wants and expects.
Although Scorsese sticks pretty close to the original film (and even scatters a handful of references to it throughout his version), the new CAPE FEAR has been updated enough that it no longer feels like something you might catch on late-night TV when the only alternatives are program-length commercials and pitches for 900 "chat" lines. Though at times CAPE FEAR's plot gets bogged down under the weight of its own unlikely machinations, it generally zips along from one predictable scene to the next, moving quickly to an equally predictable climax and denouement. None of this is bad, mind you -- CAPE FEAR is hardly food for thought, shot through though it is with enough references to philosophers and famous authors to keep the conversations at three pretentious art houses rolling long into the night. It wasn't intended to make people think thirty years ago, and Scorsese certainly hasn't done anything to change that. What it *was* intended to do was give people a frightening situation and sympathetic characters with which to identify, and a satisfying conclusion a little under two hours later so that they could all go home a little bit happier than they arrived, ready to face their own personal demons and dilemmas with renewed confidence and vigor.
Doing so is even easier now that Robert DeNiro plays the psycho, doing things that likely never even crossed Robert Mitchum's mind in the original. He at times comes close to the lunatic performance he turned in for Scorsese's 1976 classic TAXI DRIVER, though ultimately Max Cady is a much less psychotic and a much more human character than was Travis Bickle. Max is a menace from first scene to last, and the fact that Scorsese has made the family he stalks a little less perfect than Gregory Peck's family was in the original does nothing to lessen the empathy we feel for them. In fact, it does just the opposite; in the complex world of the 90s, it would be difficult for audiences to believe that such a perfectly innocent family could possibly exist, and who knows -- they might even start rooting for Max.
Rooting for Max, though, is still a problem, as DeNiro is easily the best thing in the film. Unlike THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, wherein audiences were awed by Hannibal Lector but ultimately rooted for Clarice Starling, CAPE FEAR presents us with one very interesting villain and one very uninteresting family. Try as he might to spice up Sam Bowden's family, Scorsese can't take what is essentially an unbalanced film and turn it into something it was never intended to be. By making Cady such an impressive character (and by allowing DeNiro to start gnawing at the scenery more than a few times), Scorsese gives us no other point of focus, and when the film returns to Nick Nolte and his family, we feel like counting the minutes until Cady's next appearance. The film truly revolves around him, rather than around Sam Bowden and his besieged family, and that's just one of CAPE FEAR's fundamental problems.
Another is that Scorsese piles on the directorial flourishes that he's always used in moderation to enhance his other films. In GOODFELLAS and RAGING BULL, the camera work and editing helped pull the audience into the film, where they discovered that there was more to each of these films than just what was apparent from a casual viewing. But in CAPE FEAR, the nervous camera work, flashy editing, and excessive and obvious tricks of cinematography are all for naught -- once we get past them we discover that this film has no deeper meaning, no reason to exist beyond what is apparent to us on the surface. By the third time he shows us the Spielberg-esque roiling skies over the troubled town, it's difficult to think of anything other than POLTERGEIST and half a dozen bad horror films. Scorsese also seems obsessed by the meaningless and distracting trick of turning color into black-and-white negatives; once would have been visually interesting, though rather portentous, but as with every other cinematic effect in the film, Scorsese overuses it. All those negatives did serve to remind the Phantom that he was overdue for his annual dental checkup, but beyond that it is painfully obvious that the effects are in the film simply to be in the film. By the end of CAPE FEAR, the Phantom had new respect for the work of the Coen brothers, whose flashy but similarly empty BLOOD SIMPLE is a far less overwrought and a far more successful film.
Having said all this, however, the Phantom should hasten to add that CAPE FEAR was still a lot of fun to watch, especially if one doesn't go into it expecting Scorsese's typically excellent work. This film doesn't hold a candle to GOODFELLAS, and truth be told it's really one of his lesser efforts. Still, there's a lot to be said for sitting back, relaxing, and watching DeNiro become one family's worst nightmare. And then there's his accent, which in the Phantom's opinion certainly gives Al Pacino's hilariously bad Cuban accent in SCARFACE a run for its money as the least plausible accent in modern film history (this is true only if we discount Kevin Costner's performance in ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES; Costner is without a doubt the Tony Curtis of our time, and just as Curtis brought his unique Brooklyn accent to every one of his roles, so too does Costner bring a little bit of California with him into Sherwood forest where he is the least well-spoken in his band of merry men).
That accent -- and whatever it is that DeNiro constantly does with his mouth -- brought a smile to the Phantom's own mouth more than a few times; it also served to keep the Phantom from trying to read too much into the somewhat loopy goings-on in the film. As long as CAPE FEAR is taken as pure, predictable entertainment, it works fairly well. That was the spirit in which the Phantom saw CAPE FEAR, and taken thusly, the film is good for a solid two hours of fun. Scorsese's overwrought (but well executed) special effects will likely lose a lot on the small screen, and Elmer Bernstein's adaptation of the wonderful score for the original CAPE FEAR will similarly suffer when squeezed through the 2-inch speaker in your Sony, so the Phantom recommends seeing CAPE FEAR while it's still in theaters.
And now, because the Phantom's review is a little short this time, here's an example of what "professional" reviewers can sometimes get away with. The Phantom's occasionally excessive alliteration typically can't hold a candle to the delightful examples that Vincent Canby slips into his film reviews for the New York Times every so often. Here's Vincent Canby on CAPE FEAR:
[...] Though their "Cape Fear" is no more realistic or socially significant than Mr. Thompson's, it moves with the same merciless melodramatic momentum as Mr. Scorsese's "Goodfellas." The film is sleight of hand of high order and, at carefully calculated moments, a blunt shocker.
Unlike the original, this "Cape Fear" doesn't pretend to be a picture of paradise in peril. It is apparent from the beginning that all is not well [...]
For all his faults, the Phantom has always been a phan of Canby's; now if only someone would volunteer to pay the Phantom for his own efforts he'd be able to quit his day job and attend more matinees. Nice work if you can get it...
: The Phantom : sbb@panix.com : cmcl2!panix!sbb
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