John D. MacDonald’s novel “The Executioners” has been adapted for film twice as “Cape Fear”: first in 1962, starring Robert Mitchum, and again in 1991, starring Robert De Niro and directed by Martin Scorsese. The latest adaptation, an Apple TV series created by Nick Antosca, is perhaps the most unnerving and intense retelling yet. A portrait of a family undone and a wronged man determined to seek vengeance, “Cape Fear” explores betrayal, retribution and what it really means to demand an eye for an eye.
The 10-episode limited series (critics received eight for review) opens on July 4 in modern-day Savannah, Georgia. Anna (Amy Adams), an attorney for the wrongly accused at the Savannah Justice League Project, her criminal defense attorney husband, Tom (Patrick Wilson), and their teenage children, Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack (Joe Anders), are barbecuing by the pool with friends. Out of nowhere, a storm rolls in, altering the Bowden family’s plans. Elsewhere, a weeping woman surrounded by newspaper clippings of convicted murderer Max Cady (a mesmerizing Javier Bardem) writes a note before shooting herself dead. Sometime later, a man with an eyeball tattooed on the back of his neck emerges from the gates of Tarwater State Prison. After 17 years behind bars, convicted for murdering his pregnant wife, Max is exonerated after someone else confesses to the crime.
