Character mistake: When De Niro says to Nolte even a hypothetical $50,000 offer sums to about $10 dollars a day in prison, which is correct, he mistakenly claims you divide the 5,000 days by 50,000 (as opposed to dividing $50,000 by 5,000 days). This may also be viewed as a deliberate mistake, a subtle message he is not an actual intellectual.
Cape Fear (1991)
1 character mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis
Continuity mistake: When De Niro kisses Juliette Lewis, the positions of their heads reverse twice as the camera angle changes.
Trivia: The officer that talks to Sam is played by Robert Mitchum who was the original Max Cady and the lawyer that Max hires is Gregory Peck who played the original Sam Bowden.
Question: The whole basis of the film is that Max is suddenly aware of hidden evidence that impacted his sentencing. However, his lawyer claims he wouldn't have known and hurried the case to keep it hidden. The question remains: how did Max find out about the evidence while in prison?
Answer: As I remember it, Sam Bowden, Max's lawyer, knew his client was a rapist. He did not want Max to go free, so he buried the evidence that could have exonerated him. At that time, Max was illiterate, and Bowden assumed he'd never know about the hidden information. While in prison, Max, who was actually highly intelligent, learned how to read and also studied law. He later mounted his own unsuccessful appeals, which presumably gave him access to all previous evidence.
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