This could've been a great film. And "I'm as serious as a F**king heart attack!"

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2017)

Any other actor might have kept us guessing about where the plot was heading... but we were straight out lucky to have the greatest actor on the planet (that's Robert De Niro) playing the role of Gil Renard, a baseball freak fixated on centre fielder Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), who has traded up from Milwaukee to the San Francisco Giants with a wow $40 million contract. For De Niro, maybe, it was just another film role, just another character and yet another, brilliant performance, which would go unnoticed... The term "method acting" is synonymous with Robert De Niro.
With De Niro, there's no mystery. He flashes that sicko grin from his seat in Candlestick Park, and we duck. He learns he's about to lose his job selling knives (!), and we know it won't be long until the stabbing starts. That's the problem. You sit down to watch The Fan and wonder how De Niro is going to come up with something new after firing on presidential candidate Leonard Harris in Taxi Driver, kidnapping TV star Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy, torturing lawyer Nick Nolte in Cape Fear and abusing stepson Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy's Life, to name just a few of the victims De Niro has memorably stalked.
Up till this point, "The Fan" is badly rated because of Tony Scott's miss-direction, not crappy performances by the cast or anything like a bad plot line. It shows signs of finding fresh life in a stale formula even Jim Carrey couldn't sell with The Cable Guy. De Niro is so persuasive and moving that you wish the film would let him develop the character and dodge the slasher stuff. It's not to be. The Fan rides with De Niro, (and no one else, okay maybe the kids were fine as well) substituting crass exploitation for insight.
Perhaps the late great director's brother, Ridley Scott could find gravity in this story; Tony Scott goes for the gore and the box- office gold. He strands his MVP, who is too skilled an actor to let himself get typed. De Niro will never be a typecast. A nut. One more flick like The Fan and he may discover he's created his own Frankenstein monster.
De Niro is someone we knew from the moment we saw him for the first time on screen: How god damn good he really was...and still is... and can be. The film roles doesn't matter, seriously.
What Bill Clinton Is To fries and a Big Mac, Robert De Niro is to psychos and mobsters. He can't get enough of them. De Niro eats those suckers for breakfast. Maybe he should change his diet after The Fan, (which he did actually). Because sometime you just need to skip your breakfast, you know, just to get your appetite ready for a bigger meal, for lunch.
A pumped-up, pin-headed thriller from slick-trick director, the late Tony Scott, this could've been a great film. And "I'm as serious as a F**king heart attack!"