Rating of
1.5/4
"Cape Fear" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 05/05/12
Brutal rapist Max Kady is released from prison after serving 14 years and sets about taking his revenge on the defense attorney who represented him. Martin Scorsese's remake of classic 1961 thriller came as a real surprise to me; I honestly did not believe he was capable of making something quite this BAD. If I did not know it was a Scorsese, I would have certainly pegged it as a Verhoeven or someone similar. It's schlocky, stupid and tackily directed, and full of ludicrous melodrama that borders on the absurd; in fact on more than one occasion, it looked more like a parody than a genuine thriller. If a character that is meant to be menacing is misjudged, they can often just appear laughable; Buffalo Bill was one example, and Max Kady is another. I was literally smirking half the time he was on the screen...more often than not he was like a comedy version of Michael Myers! By far the best thing about this film is a particularly funny episode of The Simpsons that takes the piss out of it.
