A really very good movie, and proof that there are remakes that are really worth it for their quality and good execution.
I've just seen this movie (which I've actually seen on television, but without paying enough attention to a movie I want to write something about) and once again I was very impressed. The truth is that, without wanting to legitimize the practice, which is often taken to exaggeration, there are remakes that manage to justify themselves, not only for the quality they demonstrate, but also for the gift, not to mention, of drawing the public's attention to the older movies. I can give my personal example: it was the contact with some remakes that made me know that there were older films and go looking for them to be able to see them.
This film maintains, without significant changes, the story told in the older film, which dates from 1962 and was starred by Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum: very briefly, it is the story of a lawyer who finds himself persecuted and threatened, with his wife and daughter, by a spiteful ex-con who blames him for many years of incarceration. Of course, there are things that change between the two films, and this film has the advantage of not giving us a simple story where a terribly bad man wants to harm a very nice man. Bowden, the lawyer, is a man with a past full of mistakes (much like many of us) who hasn't always been good at his job and his role as a husband and father, and we see that, and the way character is called upon to face the consequences. The sexual theme, which the original film attenuates a lot (due to the restrictions imposed on cinema at the time), is also more pronounced here, transforming Max Cady into an almost perfect pervert.
In addition to the nuances that make the film denser and with a more complex story, we can count on an excellent cast where Robert De Niro steals all the attention, thanks to a powerful, convincing and genuinely menacing interpretation. This film is worth seeing just to savor the actor's performance. Nick Nolte played attorney Sam Bowden, a man who desperately seeks to protect his family. The actor is good and does a good job. Much less interesting, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis play the lawyer's wife and daughter in an ambiguous and sometimes very unpleasant way: Lange can still reasonably extricate herself from the challenge she has, but Lewis has turned her character into a kind of teenage nymphet who sees Cady as a terrifying sexual temptation rather than having the discernment and intelligence necessary to at least realize the risk her entire family is running. Also a reminder of the cameos of honor by Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam, three actors who were pivotal in the original film. Incidentally, this film would end up being the last in the life of Peck, who died shortly after.
Martin Scorsese made this film as a means to an end, that is, a way to get the studio to invest in another film he wanted to make. Anyway, and for whatever reason, it was a good bet by the director. The film deserves our attention and is full of merits. The filming work and cinematography are excellent, the sets and costumes too, with an emphasis, of course, on the scenes on the Bowden houseboat. The effects were also well done, although not particularly extraordinary. The central score of this film is the same as its older counterpart, composed by Bernard Herrmann, one of the best and best conceived by the composer, and which is already part of the collective memory.
