De Palma's films generally fall into two camps: <br /><br />- the ones where his visual bravura, deeply satirical worldview and smart self-referencing compensate for his discarding of more grounded storytelling tools: perceived realism, narrative cohesion, plausible characterisation.<br /><br />- and the ones quite simply where they don't.<br /><br />In the former camp, find Carrie, Femme Fatale, Dressed to Kill, Snake Eyes, Blow Out and Body Double.<br /><br />In the latter, see The Black Dahlia, Bonfire of the Vanities, the M:I film, Raising Cain and Mission to Mars. Interesting failures, but failures all the same.<br /><br />Now to The Fury. Forget all the hysterical parodies of Carrie here, the hokum concerning psychic powers and government agencies and broken parental bonds. These things are the mundane prism through which De Palma shines his light, it refracting into a million shimmering little pieces.<br /><br />What is important is De Palma's relationship with The Fury's villain, John Cassavetes. Learned viewers will also recognise Cassavetes as the great, independent director of caustic dramas like Shadows, Woman Under the Influence and Faces. Check them out if you haven't already - they're soul-searing stuff.<br /><br />As a director, Cassavetes relied a lot on a realist aesthetic: harsh cinematography; an unshowy camera; claustrophobic interiors and close-ups; loose, improvisational performances. His characters are often trapped in their own psychological prisons. The harsh emotions that uncurl themselves slowly, cumulatively, in his films, are caught with the precision of a scalpel.<br /><br />If you're still with me, hopefully you see where I'm going with this.<br /><br />De Palma's operatic brand of film-making is an anathema to Cassavetes'. His camera takes flight like an angel and swoops like a demon. His eye is a voyeur, a lover, an aggressor, a stalker, a liar, a comfort, a cheat. One thing it isn't is passive.<br /><br />So The Fury sees a battle not between silly FBI men and even sillier psychics, but between two opposing cinematic approaches. De Palma as ever throws everything at the screen - overhead scans, dervish swoops, roaming pans, POV shots, gratuitous slo-mo, shots within shots, temporal shifts, imagined futures and projected pasts, disguises, hysteria, romance, death, the deep, deep red of spilt blood.<br /><br />Then we have Cassavettes' performance - a jet black presence lingering at the fringes of the frame. He understates every scene he's in, working against De Palma's rhapsodical movements. Its great fun to watch.<br /><br />There could however only be one winner. And how. Cassavetes' character literally explodes, destroyed by the strength of emotion (fury?) that is evoked by a great, rich vision (De Palma's). Neat.<br /><br />Can't believe someone as smart as Cassavetes went into this not seeing the bigger picture. He must have been paid handsomely.