Cape Fear-1962 vs. Cape Fear-1991 (Minor Spoilers)

Day 6 of Originals and Their Remakes week focuses on a nice little thriller and a clone that started out fine, but soon dissolved into a circus.

Max Cady is sent to prison for rape. After he gets out he starts terrorizing Sam Bowden, the attorney that helped but him away.

I'm feeling slightly lazy, so I'll break this down into bullet points of the four most important elements from the films.

1. The Hero
Nick Nolte could never, ever, in a hundred million years fill the shoes of Gregory Peck...ever. I mean let's face it, Nolte's become more (in)famous for this in recent years rather than his acting chops. And so it's pretty clear who the better hero of the film is. That's right: Peck. Gregory Peck's performance dripped with an array of emotions while trying to keep Bowden's sanity. Nolte pretty much just whined the entire time. He was completely disconnected with his character, which made me not care whether Sam Bowden survived the crazy man, and that's no way to treat the hero of your film.

2. The Villain
Though the original doesn't show a significant amount of violence, Robert Mitchum's performance makes the threat ever present. We are fearful of what he makes us believe Cady is capable of. DeNiro is equally menacing and scary, but we do get to see that animal come alive. Unfortunately, we get to see it too often. Before the end of the film, DeNiro's Cady turns into a caricature of what had been a truly terrifying villain, a mistake that Mitchum avoids completely. And DeNiro's "Southern" accent is atrocious and distracting, yet he's still the best thing in the remake.

3. The Daughter
I've never liked Juliette Lewis. I've seen a good deal of her films, but not for her. I feel her presence in a film drags down the credibility a notch...or five. So the fact that she played Bowden's daughter in the remake was annoying enough, but then they made the daughter a more significant element, which meant even more screen time for Lewis. As usual, Lewis just walks around, looking for direction while trying to spit her lines out instead of putting forth any emotion behind them. Not that Lori Martin did a much better job in the original, but all she really had to do was scream and run. Lewis actually has an incredibly creepy scene with DeNiro where he attempts to trick her into thinking he's an okay guy, which she falls for. But it's almost impossible to tell what the daughter is thinking or feeling, since Lewis doesn't let the rest of us know, that is until she's blatantly fake crying, which is the extent of her acting ability. The remake simply loses much of its momentum by focusing more on the connection between Cady and the daughter, instead of the rivalry between Cady and Bowden.

4. The Climactic Ending
In the original, Bowden finally comes up with a plan to trap Cady, which involves sending his wife and daughter out on their house boat. Cady falls for the trap and the climatic ending beautifully ensues. In the remake, Scorsese decides to one-up the original, but not in a good way. First Bowden comes up with the same plan, but decides to trap Cady at the house. When things go awry, Bowden then takes his wife and daughter out in the house boat for the real climatic ending, not the pseudo one we got previously. This all leads the remake to drag on for an extra 20 minutes or so in a purely ridiculous fashion. This is where the film lost me altogether. It turns into a three-ring circus, and DeNiro is the ringmaster.

Where the original kept to a beautifully constructed thriller about two men trying to out smart one another, the remake turned into a sleazy joke that made me feel the need for a shower afterwards. Far from Scorsese's best work.

Ratings:
Cape Fear (1962)

Cape Fear (1991)