Cape Fear Review: Apple TV's Adaptation Falls Into the Terrifying Trap of Stalking Its Predecessor

It is unfair to ask any actor to inhabit a character previously portrayed by Robert De Niro, but especially if that character is Max Cady.

In 1991's visceral, violent remake of the original 1962 Cape Fear, De Niro infuses Cady with a mix of arrogance, fury, and Southern charm that makes him simultaneously terrifying and alluring. More physically cut than he's ever been on film and inked up with tattoos, De Niro is impossible to look away from, which explains why his former attorney, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), Sam's wife Leigh (Jessica Lange), and their teenage daughter Dani (Juliette Lewis), all become obsessed with him even as he terrorizes them relentlessly. De Niro's performance makes us understand why he's so good at this with his husky cigars, vindictive drawl, and capacity to switch from gentle to brutish at the flip of a light switch, he's intimidating. But he's also fascinating.

It makes complete sense that the makers of the new Cape Fear, an Apple TV limited series that unfolds over 10 episodes and was created by Nick Antosca (Channel Zero, A Friend of the Family), thought it was a smart idea to cast Javier Bardem in De Niro's former role. Bardem is a fine actor and has experience playing daunting figures, including a cinematic villain nearly as iconic as Max Cady: Anton Chigurh, the undeterrable hitman with the unfortunate haircut in No Country for Old Men. As Cady, Bardem is, like De Niro, manipulative, scary, seductive, and slippery. But the performance is not as laser-focused as De Niro's. Instead of sliding naturally between different emotional modes, Bardem's take on Cady feels a bit all over the place. That includes his accent, which is mostly in his native Spanish, but takes occasional dips into Southern and Mid-Atlantic dialects. The way he pronounces a couple of "o"s would not seem out of place in an episode of Mare of Easttown. You are always aware Bardem is acting, and that was never the case with De Niro.

5.5

Cape Fear

at Apple TV

Like

• It attempts to recontextualize the familiar Cape Fear story with a very strong cast

Dislike

• It's narratively unwieldy
• Everyone involved seems to be trying too hard
• Bardem is a fine actor but De Niro continues to own the role

Honestly, a lot of this Cape Fear, executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, who was originally set to make the 1991 iteration before passing on the opportunity, is a bit narratively unwieldy so maybe it makes sense that Bardem's work has a similar quality. For the sake of turning what was originally a 128-minute-long movie into a roughly 10-hour series, Antosca and his fellow writers have added a lot of additional story and taken significant narrative detours from Scorsese's film. 

In the movie, Cady seeks vengeance against his attorney after learning he did not turn over evidence that could have helped Cady be acquitted of rape charges. In Apple TV's version, he's accused of killing his wife and son and eventually exonerated when his conviction is overturned. Also, his former attorney isn't the man of the house, it's the woman: Anna Bowden (Amy Adams), who represented Max in his murder trial and now works for the Southern Justice Legal Project, a pretend organization that, like the real-life Southern Poverty Law Center, helps wrongly accused criminals find justice. Anna is married to fellow lawyer Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson), who served as the prosecutor on Cady's case (before they were married), giving Cady a reason to have potential beef with both Bowdens.

Instead of a single teenage daughter, these Bowdens have two kids: a teen daughter, Natalie (Lily Collias), from Anna's previous relationship, and a troubled teen son, Zack (Joe Anders), who spends most of his time holed up in his dimly lit bedroom. Both kids are, naturally, extremely online, which provides Cady with new digital pathways to get inside their heads that didn't exist back in 1991.

While Cape Fear shares a lot more information about the characters' individual backstories than the films — spoiler alert: everyone in this show had a messed-up childhood — it purposely withholds certain details in the name of maintaining a sense of mystery. "Is there any way Max could know about what we did?" Anna whispers to Tom in the second episode. "No one knows but us," he assures her. We, the viewers, have no idea what they're referring to and won't for a while. The drama also is purposefully coy about whether Cady murdered his wife and son. In one scene, he says he never killed anyone until he was put in jail and had to do so to survive. Like so many prestige crime dramas that have come before it, Cape Fear keeps its sense of morality murky and invites us to withhold final judgment on its characters, even after we've watched them do some pretty awful things.

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All of that could conceivably be compelling but somehow, the elements in Cape Fear don't gel the way one would hope. Maybe the biggest problem is that everyone is trying so hard to get this right that you can sense the extent of their effort. Adams delivers a perfectly sturdy turn as Anna; there's a scene where she lays into the CEO of a private prison complex that's especially satisfying. But her character is so withholding that you never feel like you truly get to know her. Collias and Anders are both convincing as brooding, confused teens who each feel unseen by their parents for different reasons. You almost wish they were in another series, playing half-siblings who don't have to worry about Max Cady on top of everything else in their lives.

Cape Fear also toggles between doing something completely different from Scorsese's movie and constantly trying to duplicate it. The visual style, with its Hitchcockian quick zooms, fast edits, and occasional forays into X-ray-style illumination, is exactly the same. The violence is, again, occasionally graphic. The ominous Bernard Herrmann score, used in both the 1962 and 1991 films, appears here, too, to reliably ominous effect. Even certain famous scenes from the movie are redone with slight tweaks that re-contextualize them, including the bit where De Niro chortles diabolically in a movie theater where the Bowdens are also in the audience. Please hear me when I say that no one should ever attempt to remake that scene, unless it's in an episode of The Simpsons and Sideshow Bob is involved. 

Certainly other series based on movies have managed to successfully nod to their source material while spinning a brand new story that's suspenseful in its own right. Fargo is the best and most obvious example. But Cape Fear doesn't have the same creative audacity as Fargo. It's perfectly fine, I suppose, but not more than that. Frankly, I was expecting a little more, Counselor.

Premieres: Friday, June 5 on Apple TV with two episodes, followed by a new episode each Friday
Who's in it: Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, CCH Pounder
Who's behind it: Nick Antosca (creator), Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg (executive producers)
For fans of: Apple TV's Presumed Innocent, good efforts
Episodes watched: 8 of 10