SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the first eight episodes of “Cape Fear,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Javier Bardem has played plenty of villainous roles — the suave Raoul Silva in “Skyfall,” the devilish Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.” But Max Cady opened up something new for the Oscar winner, since the ex-convict has had years to consider how best to extract pain. “It’s fun portraying someone that has all the time in the world to achieve what he wants,” Bardem says. “That gives him a superpower: patience.”
Apple TV’s “Cape Fear” provides a new take on a familiar character. First portrayed by Robert Mitchum in the 1962 film of the same title in an adaptation of the novel “The Executioners” by John D. MacDonald, Max is best remembered as the tattooed psychopath Robert De Niro played in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 adaptation. There, Max used brute force to pulverize the family of an attorney (Nick Nolte) he believed had wronged him; Bardem plays the role more insinuatingly, drawing ever nearer to his targets while always stopping short of revealing his malignancy to the wider world. “It’s a slow curse, rather than an imposition of violence,” Bardem says. “Everything is in order to break that family.” By the July 17 installment, eight episodes into a 10-episode season, he’s largely succeeded: Three of the four members of the family he’s haunting are imprisoned or institutionalized, and the fourth is losing it. It’s the latest twist in what’s become summer’s most addictive serial — a deviously dark tale with roots in midcentury storytelling but a 2026 sensibility.
