Hopkins is excellent, though he does run the risk of recycling the part into cliché. Moore is very good, with an impossible job—standing in for Foster. Giannini is wonderful, as always. Everyone else is okay...though when the bad guys are stupid, they are astonishingly stupid!
The problem is the horrible, nonsensical rewrite they foisted on the end of the book. The plot systematically removes all of the people who support and care for Starling, so that the only relationship she is left with is Leckter. She saves him, gets shot, he saves her...and then...nothing comes of it, at least in the movie. (Probably the producers or the studio assumed that the audience would hate an ending in which they ran off together...so they gave us idiocy instead. Or rather just bad writing.) If you think about it, what other possible outcome of their relationship can there be? And what happens to the careful preparation for this ending that the rest of the book/film provides? Nonsense!!
It has been revealed that David Mamet wrote an early draft of the screenplay, but it was rejected. Can we speculate that perhaps he preserved the book's ending? (I have no idea one way or the other...)
But up to that terrible ending (Leckter chops his own hand off—seriously!!?), it's a decent film. Simplifies the plot too much (I really miss Verger's sister, but guess she had to go...), but A- for the first 90%. Then, I simply have to turn it off!
The problem is the horrible, nonsensical rewrite they foisted on the end of the book. The plot systematically removes all of the people who support and care for Starling, so that the only relationship she is left with is Leckter. She saves him, gets shot, he saves her...and then...nothing comes of it, at least in the movie. (Probably the producers or the studio assumed that the audience would hate an ending in which they ran off together...so they gave us idiocy instead. Or rather just bad writing.) If you think about it, what other possible outcome of their relationship can there be? And what happens to the careful preparation for this ending that the rest of the book/film provides? Nonsense!!
It has been revealed that David Mamet wrote an early draft of the screenplay, but it was rejected. Can we speculate that perhaps he preserved the book's ending? (I have no idea one way or the other...)
But up to that terrible ending (Leckter chops his own hand off—seriously!!?), it's a decent film. Simplifies the plot too much (I really miss Verger's sister, but guess she had to go...), but A- for the first 90%. Then, I simply have to turn it off!