Freeview film of the day : frirday 15th of May

Cape Fear (1991 122min.) [ITV 10.40pm &+1]

Thriller starring Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange. After 14 years behind bars, brutal rapist Max Cady is free to exact revenge on the man who could have kept him out of jail, lawyer Sam Bowden. Too clever to attack his victim directly, the devious ex-convict begins a reign of terror that threatens Bowden's wife and teenage daughter. Determined to crush the family, Cady's sadistic campaign causes underlying tensions to explode with devastating results.

The J.Lee Thompson 1962 version of the story (starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen) is a masterpiece of tension as Mitchum's truly disturbing villain hunts down the family of the man responsible for sending him to jail, with brutal results.

Scorsese's version suffers by comparison, especially when it attempts to open out the story from the original's very basic and linear narrative; inevitably some of the claustrophobic, mounting fear is lost as the running time expands.

That said : there's a very neat touch in this remake as the Bowden family are changed from an apple pie perfect nuclear family into a bawling mass of unresolved issues and barely functional relationships.

Juliette Lewis is outstanding as the flirtatious yet naive teenage daughter and Jessica Lange is always watchable, but especially so when she's cast as a strong female lead.

Flawed but very watchable.