Disappointing, not to say this wasn't a great movie.

Rating: 8/10 (19 June 2008)

The Silence of the Lambs won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1992, and though I did enjoy Beauty and the Beast more, I can understand this winning. It was the best of the nominated films and overall that was a weak year. This movie is highly enjoyable with well written and even better acted out characters, such as Anthony Hopkins who seemed to gain the fame that he had been searching for after years of acting with his portrayal of the psychotic Dr. Hannibal Lechter. The direction is good, and the situations, though horrible, are also believable. It doesn't seem to far-fetched that a serial killer would make a coat of human skin, does it? I think the problem here is a lack of true tension. Scenes trying to be suspenseful and tense came off almost as clichés, and weren't nearly as scary as they could have been.
FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is on the case of a serial killer who is known as Buffalo Bill, but in order to get information on him, she must go to incarcerated psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lechter, who was put away for killing and eating his victims. As the story progresses Clarice begins to learn more and Buffalo Bill continues killing and skinning his victims.
This movie is very good, not excellent, but very good. Many critics say this movie is so disgustingly violent, but that's just not true. Though violence does occur, none of it was over the top, and it occurred very infrequently throughout the picture. The acting is top notch, with as I (and anyone else who reviewed this mentioned) said earlier, with Anthony Hopkins pulling the most he could out of his scenes. Jodie Foster was also very good, and so was Ted Levine as the disturbed serial killer Buffalo Bill. The scary moments...well, for me there were none. Any scene trying to be scary fell flat. One scene involves a character being stalked by a man with night vision goggles in his dark house, and that scene should have had my heart pumping for the safety of the character, but it didn't. I found it clichéd and very typical of any slasher film. Another thing that just didn't work for me was constant flashbacks from Jodie Foster looking back at her traumatic childhood. It should have had real drama, but again felt contrived and clichéd. I also didn't like the musical score, which felt like something that belonged on an episode of NYPD Blue, or some TV show, and not in a good movie.
Overall, this movie was great, and entertaining to watch, but it has some faults that drop it from a thrilling adventure I want to watch again and again to a very good movie, but a mediocre thriller.
My rating: *** out of ****. 120 mins. R for language and some blood violence.