De Niro's best acting in years

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2006)

As psychopathic baseball fan Gil Renard, Robert De Niro does his best acting in years. Of course, he's had plenty of practice in the past, whether it's Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" or Max Cady in "Cape Fear" De Niro has specialized in dangerously off-the-wall roles and Renard is up there with the best of them. He lifts what is otherwise a conventional thriller, flashily directed by Tony Scott, into something memorable and relegates everyone else on screen into third base, in particular Ellen Barkin, the only female of note in the cast and even then used perfunctorily. What De Niro does here may not in great acting in any strict definition of the term, but by God it is still something to behold.