The Silence of the Lambs

4.38
    The Silence of the Lambs
    1991

    Synopsis

    Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.

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    Cast

    • Jodie FosterClarice M. Starling
    • Anthony HopkinsDr. Hannibal Lecter
    • Scott GlennJack Crawford
    • Ted LevineJame 'Buffalo Bill' Gumb
    • Anthony HealdDr. Frederick Chilton
    • Brooke SmithCatherine Martin
    • Diane BakerSenator Ruth Martin
    • Kasi LemmonsArdelia Mapp
    • Frankie FaisonBarney Matthews
    • Tracey WalterLamar

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Variety

      A mesmerizing thriller that will grip audiences from first scene to last.
    • 100

      San Francisco Chronicle

      The interplay between Starling and Lector as they share an indefinable, dark understanding gives the film its unforgettable and unsettling power. [14 February 1991, Daily Notebook, p.E1]
    • 100

      Rolling Stone

      The superbly crafted suspense thriller…slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.
    • 100

      USA Today

      A movie with this kind of haunting power comes along only once every decade or so. [20 February 1991, Life, p.11D]
    • 90

      TV Guide Magazine

      Hopkins plays the cannibalistic doctor with a quiet, controlled erudition, lacing his performance with moments of black humor. His Lecter is a sort of satanic Sherlock Holmes whose spasms of violence are all the more terrifying because they erupt from beneath such an intelligent and refined mask.
    • 90

      Washington Post

      A smart, restrained entertainment, it doesn't splash around in blood and hysteria. It doesn't have to.
    • 88

      Chicago Sun-Times

      It has been a good long while since I have felt the presence of Evil so manifestly demonstrated as in the first appearance of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs.
    • 70

      Chicago Reader

      An accomplished, effective, grisly, and exceptionally sick slasher film that I can't with any conscience recommend, because the purposes to which it places its considerable ingenuity are ultimately rather foul.

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