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Scorsese's remake of the classic suspense thriller does so many things well, it comes as a shock that it is as unsatisfying and unpleasant as it is. It wants to turn the screws so tight that the audience screams­and it succeeds in doing so for a while. It wants to deconstruct the ideal of the American family--it finds plenty of evil and corruption there to fill any serious drama. It wants to flay the audience's eyeballs in their heads with visual flamboyance--this is a visually dazzling film that borrows visual liet motifs from a broad spectrum of film noir traditions in addition to Scorsese's own visual sensibility. What happens when these elements are mixed together, however, is akin to three separate symphonies in three separate keys playing at once. The result is cacophony.

This is not helped by the fact that Robert De Niro turns in the first bad performance he has ever given for Scorsese. His leering maniac is out of place in a film that worships at the altar of film noir and his presence unbalances the film to such an extent that when it devolves into a pummelling exercise in graphic violence at the end, it seems that we have come full circle and the other elements of the film are out of sorts, with De Niro's madman taking the stage in his own element. This mix of elements makes one wonder if Scorsese really trusted his material here, because at every turn, he seems to be apologizing for it with pretentious camerawork and portentious sociological observations. A puzzling, bewildering film, one leaves the theater after viewing it feeling wrung-out, hollow, and abused.