As it is, with the interaction of the Verger plot, the mechanisms of the FBI fall completely flat. I see nothing in those plot elements but writers who couldn't figure any other way to make things happen. I just don't buy the treatment of Starling. Ray Liotta's character serves only one purpose - to unite the audience and Lecter, which should've happened long ago. If, by the end of the film, Liotta needs to be talking about "corn-pone pussy" to get me to cheer for Lecter, failure has already occurred. It's funny to have Lecter — murderer, cannibal — be upstaged in the evil department by sexist and power-focused beaurocrats. If that's Scott's point, that the calculating, power-mad side of human nature is more insidiously dangerous than Lector's refined animalism, well...whatever. I'd be happy with a simple suspense film, which I didn't get. Please, just give me Lecter being smarter than everyone but weakened by desire for Starling. That's all we need. It's simple, and that's what I paid to see.

Most of the visual bloat of the film is the result of Scott covering his ass while shooting. It's apparent that there were many unmade script decisions regarding the ending and certain (mostly deleted) subplots. Scott had to shoot in such a way that he could add or subtract at will, and that slows the film, watering down what little sense of purpose it has. Despite the title, which indicates we are to see a real portrait of this fascinating figure, there are still too many distracting side-roads, like the studio was too afraid to commit to a full-on take on Lecter. No surprise, but it's kinda fun to see a studio's gutless, ass-covering money-grubbing antics backfire occasionally; the film would have done much better business had it a true sense of purpose. The business Scott relates in the commentary about not explicitly showing Lecter corrupting people is crap. That's what he does. Or, more directly, he shortcuts people to their true nature, which he sees as brutish and debased. He's not compassionate and trying to make him so is studio cowardice.

It's probably also worth noting that by the final third of the film, my friends and I would greet every person to walk on-screen with cries of "Eat him! Eat him!". I'd say they'd lost us.

[This entry represents a slight revision of an earlier write-up at The Pork Store]