Martin Scorsese's loose remake of J. Lee Thompson's 1962 thriller is an exercise in audience manipulation, with every frame designed to stagger the senses. During quiet scenes, the camera is in constant, unsettling motion. During big scenes, shock cuts to weird, menacing angles and
reality-bending, high-tech optics accompany dark images of eroticism and violence.
In a telling twist on the original film, Nick Nolte plays lawyer Sam Bowden as a mean-spirited womanizer who has cheated on his burnt-out, embittered wife Leigh, played by Jessica Lange. (In the 1962 version, the Bowdens were morally pristine, impossibly upright citizens.) Leigh broods at home,
venting...
Released:
1991
Rated:
R
Length:
128 mins