Directed by Martin Scorsese • 1991 • United States
Starring Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange

Martin Scorsese fuses his bravura stylistic command and personal themes of sin and guilt with the pulp-pleasure mechanics of genre filmmaking for this brutally effective thriller, a morally unsettling, grippingly virtuosic remake of the 1962 Robert Mitchum–Gregory Peck (both back in cameo appearances) classic. Here, a terrifying Robert De Niro brings psychopathic swagger to the role of Max Cady, a tattoo-scrawled rapist who, just released from prison, makes it his mission to exact revenge on Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), the public defender who lost his case, waging a personal, increasingly berserk campaign of retribution that ensnares Bowden’s wife (Jessica Lange) and impressionable teenage daughter (Juliette Lewis).