4 out of 5

Director: Jonathan Demme

This has been reviewed several times out by several people whose reviews – for whatever unfathomable reason – carry more weight than mine, so this is me typing for my own edification AND NOT YOURS SO BACK OFF. Silence of the Lambs was… good. Very well done, very well performed, great production design, etc. etc. It’s a good movie. It’s one of those good movies from the 90s that seemed to happen once a year or so then but don’t pop up as much now. But watching it in 2011, it’s odd that it made such a splash… if anything it seems notable because the content is surprising for the big names, but overall this is a well done, better paced and more fleshed out episode of CSI. Now I don’t mean that derisively, because gritty police procedurals weren’t in vogue in ’91… but also CSI-type shows offer interest because they get down into the dirt and show us how the world of violence and crime might actually work… Silence of the Lambs, way before this was a trend, made the formula pop by actually adding worthwhile characters. And, as Ebert noted in his review, the structure to the film is smart – we don’t focus on the killer or the action, and the creepy Hannibal Lector is, in fact, not the main character or killer, but the script smartly finds a back door into the world, which also pushes up light years beyond the bright lights and gore of CSI. But overall? Still a police procedural. A damn good one. Misses being breathtaking because there are details and scenes that seem culled from the book as opposed to being in the movie for a reason, and this slows the pace somewhat.