Metrograph

Scorsese’s baroque remake of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 potboiler of the same name about a defense lawyer terrorized by a former client improves on its inspiration in almost every regard, not least in replacing Gregory Peck as the original’s upstanding attorney with Nick Nolte, playing a far more compromised version of the same character. Add to this Robert De Niro as the film’s self-styled Übermensch psychopath, Juliette Lewis as Nolte's character’s hormonally confused daughter, a brooding adaptation of the original Bernard Herrmann score courtesy of Elmer Bernstein, and Old Master Francis’s lurid cinematography, and you’ve got one of the most distinctive thriller/morality tale/revenge tragedies of the ’90s. Of bringing Francis on board, Scorsese would say “the main thing was Freddie’s understanding of the concept of gothic atmosphere… He understands the obligatory scene of a young maiden with a candle walking down a long hall towards a door. ‘Don’t go in that door!’ you yell, and she goes in. Every time, she goes in.”