Unlike the original film and novel where Max Cady is a convicted sex offender, this reimagines Javier Bardem’s Max Cady as a man who has just served 17 years in prison for the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, Melissa. Released back into society, Cady is bizarrely treated by some corners of the public and a documentary crew as a folk hero and a victim of a miscarriage of justice.
At the centre of his resentment are attorney Anna Bowden, played by Amy Adams (Big Eyes) and her husband, prosecutor Tom Bowden played by Patrick Wilson (Molly's dad in Fargo)! Years prior, Anna served as Max's defence counsel and pushed him into a harsh plea deal, while Tom helped put him away. Adding to the heavy psychological web, it is revealed that Anna and Max share a complicated past and Anna secretly - for reasons that come out in the show - rushed Max’s plea deal through and got him locked away.
The middle stretch of the ten episodes slows down significantly and gets kinda talky, leaning into updated themes of misinformation and character back-stories, not present in previous depictions of the story. Cady systematically inserts himself into the Bowdens' lives, exploiting existing fractures, sowing intense paranoia between Tom and Anna and targeting their children, Zack (Joe Anders) and Natalie (Lily Collias). The psychological torture culminates in brutal ways - such as Zack being targeted and manipulated - while Cady builds a public persona, even managing to launch a restaurant named Melissa & Adam dedicated to his lost family.
As the series stretches into its final episodes, the slow-burn pacing of the middle bit explodes into action during a Category 5 hurricane, like in the film, hitting Savannah, Georgia - unlike the 1991 film, where the finale, you will remember, is at Cape Fear on the boat. Before confronting the Bowdens directly, Cady tracks down his estranged family (again, more padding) on a houseboat, featuring his abusive, institutionalising, religion-nutty father Robert (played by the scary and sinister Ron Perlman) and, at the risk of giving too much away, Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers, From Dust Till Dawn, Husbands and Wives) pops up in a similarly dark persona - an interesting hook into the 1991 film, where she plays the family's daughter so well.
In the finale, all the threads are pulled together and yes, it is a much more complex plot (partly because of said padding to make it a longer story for the ten episodes) where the strands reside - but it has a satisfying outcome in many ways as we work out how the puzzle fits together. The pacing, apart from that middle slow-down, is tackled well with reveals placed where they needed to be in order to raise tension and suspense, usually culminating in episodic cliffhanger endings!
Lily Collias (in the film's Juliette Lewis role as the family daughter) plays Natalie brilliantly well - in fact, she almost steals the show throughout, frankly (much like Juliette Lewis in the film). Natalie is not as green and naive as Lewis's Danielle (the daughter in the film), but rather street-wise and confident. They do share the same vulnerability, however, in terms of wanting to push boundaries set down by controlling parents - and thus finding an audience for the always-menacing and threatening Max. So yes, to my second fear at the outset (perhaps my Cape Fear!); Bardem is terrific, as he usually is in all his acting engagements. He has developed his character - not sure by how much, as he seems to also have been on the production team, alongside Martin Scorsese (another link as director of the 1991 film) and Steven Spielberg, alongside Adams, too.
Directors of the episodes were different people and included Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Defending Jacob), Reed Morano (The Handmaid's Tale), Trey Edward Shults (Waves), Stephen Williams (Watchmen) and Jonathan van Tulleken (Shōgun) - so much to look out for there in terms of shooting style and, well, yes, direction! It really is very well done, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout, despite the slow-down midway to pad it out. It's edge-of-the-seat stuff mostly, gripping TV - what we've come to expect from Apple!
I do think that Bardem and Collias were the stars of the show for my final takeaway, but that might well have also been true for the respective characters' actors, Lewis and De Niro, in the 1991 film. It's highly recommended by me - and now I'm off to watch the 1991 film again, and also the 1962 version with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, which I've not visited in decades. Good stuff. And great telly!
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