**
Well-made but unsatisfying thriller, based on both John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners and James R. Webb's screenplay for the original 1962 adaptation, also called Cape Fear. In a fit of just-to-be-different-ness, screenwriter Wesley Strick turns MacDonald's cohesive family unit into a dysfunctional one, presenting them with a life or worse-than-death scenario in which the husband (Nick Nolte) is a weak, wishy-washy cheater, the wife (Jessica Lange) a castrating bitch, and the teenage daughter (Juliette Lewis) a rebellious moron (not to put too fine a point on it). Psychopathic menace couldn't have happened to a more deserving family. Robert De Niro plays the psycho -- he wants revenge on the lawyer who suppressed evidence that might have saved him from a 14-year prison term -- and he's very good, if equally hard to believe: by the time he gets out of prison, this self-taught man could have been a lawyer, a teacher, a priest, or a professional wrestler -- if he just weren't wildly insane. Scorsese makes it all look very slick, though. Also with Joe Don Baker, as well as Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, both of whom starred in the original film.
Well-made but unsatisfying thriller, based on both John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners and James R. Webb's screenplay for the original 1962 adaptation, also called Cape Fear. In a fit of just-to-be-different-ness, screenwriter Wesley Strick turns MacDonald's cohesive family unit into a dysfunctional one, presenting them with a life or worse-than-death scenario in which the husband (Nick Nolte) is a weak, wishy-washy cheater, the wife (Jessica Lange) a castrating bitch, and the teenage daughter (Juliette Lewis) a rebellious moron (not to put too fine a point on it). Psychopathic menace couldn't have happened to a more deserving family. Robert De Niro plays the psycho -- he wants revenge on the lawyer who suppressed evidence that might have saved him from a 14-year prison term -- and he's very good, if equally hard to believe: by the time he gets out of prison, this self-taught man could have been a lawyer, a teacher, a priest, or a professional wrestler -- if he just weren't wildly insane. Scorsese makes it all look very slick, though. Also with Joe Don Baker, as well as Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, both of whom starred in the original film.
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