Truly mesmorizing

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 1999)

This movie is one I can watch over and over and never get sick of. As a matter of fact, after all these years, there are still parts that I don't understand fully. I love movies that take me a long time to figure them out!!! I don't have the intellect required to just give a rundown on what it's about, except that it's a facinating, sophisticated, brilliant psychological thriller (not a horror movie by any standards). It is terrifying but not because of blood, violence or gore. Rather, it chills you to the bone with what is unseen and unknown. Jodie Foster (an actress of unmatched intensity and one-of-a-kind performances) stars as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee who is just a week away from becoming a full-fledged agent. At the request of Behavior Field Science agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), Starling travels to a Baltimore psychiatric hospital to meet renowned serial murderer and former psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Sir Anthony Hopkins) hoping to gain insight on how to crack unsolved serial murder casees. From the moment they meet, their relationship is riveting, separated by differing values and a sheet of glass, yet united in eerily intimate ways. It's this intimacy that leads to an offer made by Lecter to Starling, an offer that might be the chance of a lifetime for Starling to make a difference, to save a life. This movie is enormously entertaining, but it's also intellectually stimulating and challenging, and not very many movies are like that to me. Presently, The Sixth Sense is a well-done addition to this few and far between genre, though not quite as frightening as "Lambs". I credit a lot of the chill factor of this movie to Hopkins, whose soft-spoken eloquence only served to enhance the undeniable evil Lecter represented. The lighting in the cell made his usually soulful blue eyes seem fish-like and lifeless, as if to transmit to the viewer the absence of soul and morality. Excellent work!!! ****