Surprisingly Effective Thriller

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2008)

Jodie Foster, in a fine performance, is FBI-trainee Clarice Starling. She is assigned by the chief of the Behavioral Sciences Division (Scott Glenn) to interview the brilliant and cannibalistic mad psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in prison and try to enlist his help in capturing a currently active serial murderer, Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), who skins his victims and sews the patches of skin into a kind of integumental suit made of women.
When Starling first visits Lecter, the chief psychiatrist ( the eminently hatable Anthony Heald) escorts her down into the bowels of the institution and cautions her about approaching Lecter too closely, although they will be separated by a wall of bullet-proof plastic.
Lecter DOES in fact help her. Buffalo Bill had once been a patient of his. But Lecter wants something too, in return. "Quid pro quo," he tells her, showing off his Latin clichés. For every hint he gives to her and to the FBI, he demands some sort of present, such as a room with a view and, most important, some personal details about Starling's earlier life, the events in her past that brought her from a one-horse town in Appalachia to the FBI. He gets it. And she gets Buffalo Bill. And Lecter escapes in order to carry on his own cannibalistic career, beginning with the eminently hatable Anthony Heald. (His last line: "I'm having an old friend for dinner tonight.") It doesn't sound too promising, does it? Still ANOTHER serial killer on the loose? With a puzzling modus operandi? Which the FBI must figure out in order to track him down and shoot him dead? But I described this as an effective thriller, not an ordinary one that serves as one more opportunity for Stallone to strip off his clothes and bulge his muscles at the camera. It's functionally directed by Jonathan Demme, based on Thomas Harris's novel. Only one incident involves a stunt man. There isn't a car chase in sight, nor an exploding fireball, nor a slow-motion shot of violence. There is one lethal beating and only a single shoot-out -- with pistols, not Uzis or 40 mm. Bofors cannons.
The three threads of the story involve Glenn's avuncular relationship with the younger Starling, the flirtation (for that's what it amounts to) between Lecter and Starling, and the pursuit of the twisted Buffalo Bill. The stories mesh very well, and one scene in particular, linking the FBI's attack on a suspect's house to Starling's casual and apparently post-climactic ringing the doorbell of a house belonging to an old lady, is masterfully done.
Tak Fujimoto's camera work could hardly be improved upon. He paints for us a wintry Middle-Atlantic setting with ice-cold rivers and stark, bare deciduous trees. There is a scene with a decomposing corpse that makes your skin crawl, although it is handled matter-of-factly, or even in such good taste as such a scene allows for. Original, too, is the character of Buffalo Bill's last intended victim, a large young lady kept prisoner in a basement pit. With Bill still darting around in the shadows somewhere, the lone Starling yells down to her and tells her she's safe now that the FBI is here. We're wrong if we expect the captive to pull the usual response. She doesn't break down and sob with relief. She screams back, "**** that, you b****! Get me out of here!" It was a nice touch in the novel too, which is written in lean, functional, and artless prose.
All of the performances are quite good, with Hopkins outstanding as the crazy genius. The character became something of an icon in vernacular culture, which I guess is why audiences find it satisfying and amusing that he should be left on the loose to kill still more people. It adds a new dimension to films -- the serial killer who deserves to be let free because he's polite and has visited Florence.
The writers help bring this story above average. When Foster explores the house of an earlier, almost forgotten victim, there is a touching moment when she discovers some hidden photos the girl had taken of herself posing coyly in her underwear, although she's too plump to be conventionally attractive. A music box plays in the background while Foster goes through these pitiful remnants and we can sense the life behind the death. The direction isn't free of conventions though. Foster is blinded in darkness and the murder's hand reaches out from behind the camera and traces her contours without touching them. Every horror movie must have such a scene. And earlier, when Scott Glenn realizes he's sent Foster into a dangerous, potentially lethal circumstance without any warning, the camera moves in quickly to a close up of his startled expression as he says, "Clarice!" These clichés are available in finer B-grade slasher movies everywhere.
The conventions are aptly deployed though and the movie succeeds in what it's trying to do.