Cape Fear (1991 film)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Robert De Niro Is Staring Into Your Soul.

1991 remake of the original Cape Fear, directed by Martin Scorsese. The plot of the film is fundamentally unchanged from its predecessor: It tells the story of Sam Bowden, a lawyer whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist. The rapist, Max Cady, wants vengeance for having been imprisoned on Bowden's testimony after the latter witnessed him attempting to rape a woman. After a lengthy game of cat and mouse between the two, Bowden takes his family to their houseboat on Cape Fear, hoping to set a trap for Cady that will lead to his re-imprisonment. Needless to say, this does not go as planned.

Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro portrayed Bowden and Cady. De Niro and Juliette Lewis received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for their performances. In this version, Cady is out to get Bowden because the latter, while defending Cady on a rape charge, allowed possibly-exculpatory evidence about the victim to remain secret, leading to Cady's conviction.

Tropes used in Cape Fear (1991 film) include:
  • Amoral Attorney: Gregory Peck's cameo as Cady's lawyer.
  • As the Good Book Says...: Cady is a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and often quotes the Bible with wide-eyed furor.
  • Ax Crazy: Max Cady.
  • Bizarre Taste in Food: Kersek’s favorite drink is Jim Bean mixed with Pepto-Bismol.
  • Both Sides Have a Point: While Max Cady is a vile, disgusting rapist, he does have a point that in spite of his crimes, Sam Bowden is bound by law to give him the best defence and that the evidence that would have cleared him, should have been presented. Sam in turn has a point that just because the victim was promiscuous did not mean Cady had legal grounds to commit rape.

Sam Bowden: Just because she was promiscuous didn't give you the right to rape her and you bragged about beating two prior rapes. You were a meanace!!!
Max Cady: YOU WERE MY LAWYER!!! You were my lawyer, that report could have saved me 14 years!!!

  • Chekhov's Gun: The piano wire, the gun, and the lighter fuel.
  • Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are
  • Composite Character: Robert De Niro's Cady combines the original with another famous villain played by Robert Mitchum; Sinister Minister Harry Powell.
  • Famous Last Words: “I’m bound for the promised land! I am- I’m bound... for the promised laaand!” Max Cady
  • Forgotten Trope: Viewers can be somewhat mystified by the premise for why antagonist Max Cady (Robert De Niro) felt slighted by protagonist Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte). At the time of release, the prior sexual history of a rape victim was a valid defense that would have lessened Cady's sentence, or might have even kept him out of jail. Nowadays, prior sexual history is inadmissible in rape cases.
  • Genius Bruiser: Cady is both in exceptionally good shape and terrifyingly smart.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: While Sam is by no means as good as his 1962 counterpart, he is in essence a good man trying to do right by his family. When Cady gets into his life again, he tries to handle things the legal way at first. However when Cady kept stonewalling him at every turn, he gets desperate and has him beaten, which Cady was able to use against him. During the climax of the movie, Sam is reduced to a snarling, growling beast of a man beating Cady senseless with rocks.
  • I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Cape Fear.
  • Ironic Echo: In a meta-sense; where Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum played the upstanding lawyer and the sadistic rapist in the original, their cameo roles in the remake essentially place them on the opposite sides, with Mitchum playing a police detective sympathetic to Bowden's plight and Peck playing Cady's attorney.
    • When Kersek first confronts Cady while trying to intimidate him, Kersek calls Cady a “white trash piece of shit”. After murdering Kersek, Cady refers to him by the same term.
  • Large Ham: De Niro, in fine form.
  • Made of Iron: Max gets beaten on for quite a while by some thugs, but as soon as he gets a weapon away from one of them, he takes them all down with ease. Later, Danielle throws some boiling water in his face, and he doesn't even blink.
  • Man Bites Man: When Cady rapes Lori, a law clerk who may or may not be having an affair with Sam Bowden, one of the first things he does is break her arm and bite a chunk of her face off, before giving her a horrific beating.
  • Nominal Hero: Kersek, who constantly suggests to Bowden having thugs beat Cady up to run him out of town.
  • Private Detective: Claude Kersek.
  • Police Are Useless: When Bowden suspects that Cady is stalking him, the first thing he does is go to the police, but they can't do anything because they lack any evidence of wrongdoing.
  • Professional Wrestling: There wasn't any of it in the movie, but WWE based the short lived Waylon Mercy character on De Niro's portrayal of Cady.
  • Remake Cameo: The remake featured cameos by Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, the hero and antagonist (respectively) of the original.
  • Revenge: Cady's lust for revenge against Bowden fuels the plot and hits a lot of Revenge Tropes.
  • Sacrificial Lion: It becomes clear how dangerous Cady really is when he murders Kersek in cold blood.
  • Scarpia Ultimatum
  • Tattooed Crook: Max Cady.
  • Underside Ride: Max Cady ties himself to the bottom Sam Bowden's car, causing the Bowden family to take him directly to the houseboat. This probably the most parodied element of the film.
  • Villainous Breakdown: After Danielle lights him on fire, Candy goes totally insane, talking to himself, babbling in tones, and ranting about being bound for the promised land.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: While it was highly unprofessional for Bowden to withhold evidence from the trial, it didn't excuse the fact that Cady had actually performed a brutal rape so Bowden felt Cady needed to serve the maximum sentence. Bowden defiantly points this out to Cady during the final confrontation. The nature of the evidence--the rape victim's sexual history--also helps with this, "shaming the victim" in such a sense being a particularly controversial defense in rape trials.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Max Cady.


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