A study in building up a character as a bad ass

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2006)

If silence of the lambs didn't do anything else right (in fact it did everything right) it would serve as the perfect example of how to build up a character as a bad ass. The secret is perfectly on display. All the rules are followed. Screen time for Hannibal Lecter is kept to a minimum, at just under sixteen minutes. This utter lack of screen time which build the anxiety necessary to the character subsequently was ignored in the sequels and the result is that Hannibal falls victim to the Freddie Krueger effect where your sympathies begin to cynically side with him, thus underplaying the currents of the movie. All great heroes and villains must follow this rule in order to be considered true movie bad asses. Think Darth Vader, or Clint Eastwood in unforgiven, or Micheal Madsen as Mr blonde in reservoir dogs. The second rule is to have you're bad ass doing things decidedly not bad ass, i.e. Eastwood getting beat up in unforgiven, and here Hannibal is mostly a caged animal. The third rule is to have other characters reference the potential violence your bad ass can unleash. Here, numerous characters talk about just how bad Hannibal is, and in a masterstroke, doctor Chilton shows a picture to Jodie Foster, that the audience never sees. This is like the scene in reservoir dogs, where the audience's imagination are encouraged to imagine the most horrific things. This movie follows all the rules and creates on of the all time hard core movie bad asses!!!!!! 10 out of 10