The psychopathology is all wrong.

Rating: 1/10 (13 April 2008)

I was not impressed with this film, and it's phoney psychiatry. I have some professional experience in working with the criminally insane, in the US and UK. While there are a few staff in the profession who would allow themselves to be manipulated in the way that Clarice Starling does, I cannot conceive any real life situation where so many of her colleagues would allow this situation, known as "team splitting", to continue. It is routine behaviour for psychopaths to attempt to team split, as Lekter does, but it is such a standard ploy that it would be recognised in any institution other than the toyland one in the film and quickly dealt with, and I resent the attitude of the storyline in glorifying this behaviour. Trust me people, if you are in this situation, don't allow patients to split you away from your colleagues, you may think they are interested in you but they will get bored with playing with you in the end. When patients are given this power, which they cannot handle, it makes them more scared, and less likely to learn. In his attempt to make Frederick Chilton, the character that should be the good guy, in to the bad guy, either the actor or the director has gone way over the top, to the point where where pathos becomes bathos, and as for Anthony Hopkins, he lost all credibility for me when he announced in a British tabloid that he was sorry for seeming to condone violence in the role he was playing, and then within a few months proceeded to repeat the role in the sequel, "Hannibal". That's why I never bothered to see the film until just recently.