Caged Lambs

Rating: 3/10 (7 April 2006)

Movie adaptations of novels, even pop bestsellers with the imagery masticated for us, are a tricky business to cinematically get right. Some find a good translation by falling backward into it, like "Jaws". Rare birds like "2001: A Space Odyssey" transcend previous visual understandings, and overpower the written word.
You can include this movie with "Presumed Innocent" or "...Cuckoo's Nest": in each case, the wrong path was chosen.
The novel hinges on Lecter's perspective -- here Hopkins plays a mere boogey man. All we get is the cheap device of haunted houses.
In the novel, Lecter moves physically and psychologically wherever he wants: in Harris' words, 'as if he chose the distance' from the protagonist/detective. He occupies his own universe of perception, based mostly on sight and smell -- Demme might have really done something by recreating the world sensed by Lecter. Instead, he spends all of his time lovingly gazing into Foster's face.
If you want a better construction of a world, stay with "Manhunter".