Continuity mistake: When Nick Nolte confronts his daughter in her bedroom about meeting with Robert De Niro, as the camera angle switches from Nolte's face to his daughter's face, his hand over her mouth changes positions.
Cape Fear (1991)
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Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis
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Cape Fear is a gritty early Martin Scorsese film where a lawyer who withheld evidence that could have helped his guilty client's case was purposefully withheld, leading to his conviction, long incarceration and hunger for cruel revenge against that lawyer and his family. Robert DeNiro presents a menacing, dangerous character who's also intelligent enough to have used his time in prison to fully immerse himself in the law so that he can better circumvent it later, while Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis star as the targeted lawyer and his wife and child who spend the film badgered by the rapist/murderer! It's a tense thriller that shouldn't be missed.
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Trivia: The officer that talks to Sam is played by Robert Mitchum who was the original Max Cady and the lawyer that Max hires is Gregory Peck who played the original Sam Bowden.
Question: The whole basis of the film is that Max is suddenly aware of hidden evidence that impacted his sentencing. However, his lawyer claims he wouldn't have known and hurried the case to keep it hidden. The question remains: how did Max find out about the evidence while in prison?
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Answer: As I remember it, Sam Bowden, Max's lawyer, knew his client was a rapist. He did not want Max to go free, so he buried the evidence that could have exonerated him. At that time, Max was illiterate, and Bowden assumed he'd never know about the hidden information. While in prison, Max, who was actually highly intelligent, learned how to read and also studied law. He later mounted his own unsuccessful appeals, which presumably gave him access to all previous evidence.
raywest ★