By FilmInk Staff
Yay! Another small screen remake/adaptation nobody wanted or needed! Presumed Innocent (and a few others), we’re looking at you! This time, it’s Cape Fear, based on a novel by John D. MacDonald, and first filmed in 1962 (to near perfection) with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, and then again (to near perfection) in 1991 with Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. Well, if it’s worked twice, why not give it another crack, huh? But this time, padded out to series length, likely with lots of “contemporary” flourishes? Well, at least they didn’t gender flip it. Featuring a growly Javier Bardem in full ham-bone mode as psycho Max Cady and a drearily cast Patrick Wilson and Amy Adams as the seemingly straight-laced couple responsible for him doing (very hard) prison time, this Apple TV effort looks like fairly compelling but decidedly overwrought and utterly unnecessary stuff. But if you’ve got existing IP, you may as well as exploit it, right? Throw in actors looking for awards and acclaim, and the temptation is obviously just too much.
