Cape Fear Blu-ray review

            Even critically acclaimed art film directors sell out to make a studio blockbuster every once and a while. Cape Fear was that film for Martin Scorsese in the early 1990s. After having ruled the previous decade with challenging and important films, from Mean Streets to Taxi Driver to Raging Bull, Scorsese took on a project which surprised many people; it was a big budget remake of a past Hollywood classic. And even though many critics panned Scorsese’s Hollywood turn, it is a film packed with style and yet another powerhouse performances from Scorsese favorite, Robert De Niro.

            De Niro received an Academy Award nomination for his performance as Max Cady, a vicious psychopath who is released from prison with an unshakable determination to punish the attorney he blames for his sentence. Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) has risen in success since his mishandling of Cady’s case, and he now has quite a bit to lose, including his beautiful wife (Jessica Lange) and impressionable teenage daughter (Juliette Lewis).

            The budget on Cape Fear far exceeded anything Scorsese had worked with previously, and a great deal of it appears to have gone to the high-spectacle finale aboard a houseboat. The visuals are more developed and polished while remaining distinctly Scorsese and this is reason alone to own Cape Fear on Blu-ray. The high definition presentation of the film looks great, and the special features have been transferred over from the DVD as well. There are deleted scenes, a making-of featurette and behind-the-scenes footage from two key sequences.