\u201cCape Fear\u201d is a psychological thriller starring Robert Mitchum as ex-convict, Max Cady, looking for revenge against the man who put him in prison eight years before for rape.\u00a0 Gregory Peck plays Sam Bowden Cady\u2019s target.\u00a0 But Cady\u2019s real targets are Bowden\u2019s wife Peggy and daughter Nancy.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Cady shows up in the small southern town where Sam lives and begins threatening his family in a veiled way.\u00a0 Sam is an attorney and a friend of the town sheriff Mark Dutton played by Martin Balsam.\u00a0 Dutton agrees to investigate Cady but the clever psychopath has carefully planned his campaign in a way that makes him immune to the local law enforcement.\u00a0 He has a lawyer in tow who threatens the police with a harassment suit if they continue rousting him for flimsy charges.<\/p>\n But when his family dog is poisoned, Sam begins to panic.\u00a0 He tries to buy Cady off with a $20,000 payoff but Cady explicitly tells him that what he wants is to attack Peggy and Nancy.\u00a0 There are several incidents where Cady stalks the Bowdens and at one point Sam attacks Cady but he isn\u2019t goaded into fighting back.<\/p>\n Sam pays a private detective to follow Cady looking for him to commit something criminal by which to force him to leave.\u00a0 And he does do something heinous.\u00a0 He takes up with a woman he meets at a bar and at a hotel that they go to for a sexual tryst Cady ends up brutally beating and sexually abusing her.\u00a0 When the police, and Sam show up at the hotel the woman refuses to press charges.\u00a0 She says that even if Cady goes to jail for ten years, she fears that when he got out, he would kill her.<\/p>\n Now desperate, Sam pays three thugs to beat Cady into a state where he would leave on his own.\u00a0 Instead, Cady beats the three men till they needed hospitalization and one of them confesses that Sam paid them.\u00a0 Cady\u2019s lawyer reports Sam to the Bar Association for criminal behavior.<\/p>\n With no possibility of the sheriff for help, Sam thinks up a plan to trap Cady using his wife and daughter as bait.\u00a0 He pretends to go to Atlanta to answer charges before the Bar Association while he sends his family to a remote location on the Cape Fear River on a houseboat.\u00a0 But in reality, he arrives shortly after the family along with a deputy sheriff that agrees to help him guard the family from Cady.<\/p>\n Cady follows the private detective who was meant to lure him into the trap.\u00a0 But Cady is too clever for the trappers and he manages to drown the deputy sheriff and by the time Sam has discovered this, Cady has menaced Peggy and abducted Nancy.\u00a0 Sam arrives just in time to save Nancy but Cady knocks the gun out of Sam\u2019s hand and then almost drowns him before Sam turns the tables and strikes Cady in the head with a rock.\u00a0 Sam has time to get Nancy to run away before Cady returns with a club to finish him off.\u00a0 At the last second Sam recovers his gun and shoots Cady.\u00a0 Badly wounded Cady tells him, \u201cFinish it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care.\u201d\u00a0 But Sam taunts him with the news that instead of a clean death Cady would be locked up like an animal for the rest of his life for the murder he committed.\u00a0 The movie ends with the Bowdon family leaving Cape Fear on a police launch headed for home.<\/p>\n This movie is a tour de force by Mitchum.\u00a0 The rest of the cast is satisfactory but the picture belongs to him.\u00a0 Watching his portrayal, I could easily believe that he actually was a degenerate criminal in real life.\u00a0 He\u2019s just that convincing.\u00a0 Mitchum\u2019s portrayal and the sense of helplessness that his plan instils in the Bowdens provides the audience with an atmosphere fraught with menace.\u00a0 The movie provides effective thrills and a villain that everyone can love to hate.\u00a0 Highly recommended for fans of suspense films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cCape Fear\u201d is a psychological thriller starring Robert Mitchum as ex-convict, Max Cady, looking for revenge against the man who put him in prison eight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[3610,1676,43,38,1355,3189],"class_list":["post-26046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-gregory-peck","tag-martin-balsam","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-robert-mitchum"],"yoast_head":"\n