Tango and Cash (1989) - Starring Sylvester Stallone & Kurt Russell - Drugs, prisoners and detectives

This time, Sly pairs up with Kurt Russell. The duo are detectives with the LAPD narcotics department. Given that drugs have always been big in LA, and are also a recurrent theme in Sly’s movies, he is sending out a message to audiences to steer clear away from the death knell.
Ray Tango (Sylvester Stallone) and Gabriel Cash (Kurt Russell) are hardnosed detectives who have constantly been in the news for heckling drug kingpin Yves Perret (Jack Palance), within the legal ambit, performing separately in different zones. They come face to face after a tip off that a drug deal is going to take place at an unspecified location one night. The two reach the place, only to discover the presence of a corpse, already wire taped; the FBI arrives on the crime scene, puts two and two together, and arrests the detectives.
The Federal Agents finds Cash’s weapon and makes the arrest as the evidence against the two is incriminating - especially with an audio tape given to Agent Wyler (Lewis Arquette) by one of Perret’s stooges, a guy called Requin (Brion James). In the tape, when presented in court, it is heard that Detective Gabriel Cash and Detective Tango are heard to be discussing the purchase of narcotics, and the sound of the shooting of the man (an FBI Agent, nonetheless) are both clear and evident. Tango and Cash are transported to a maximum security prison, after they plead to lesser charges. They are to be housed with the many hardened criminals they themselves have arrested in the past - and the men are waiting for their pound of flesh each (it can be pretty difficult for policemen who have been sentenced and sent to jail)!




Obviously, not ones to lose the chance of getting even with their enemies, the prisoners, led by Requin, beat the duo up, till the fighting is disrupted by the assistant prison warden Matt Sokowski (who was also Cash’s commanding officer at one point in time). Matt is understanding, and knows that the men will come after the duo again, and might end up killing them this time - he suggests they hatch a plan to escape – Tango does not acquiesce and refuses to go along with the plan; he is certain that they would not be successful. Cash, however, tries to make a run for it, in the chaos that ensues; the prisoners murder Matt and are baying for Cash’s blood as well. Luckily, Ray Tango comes to his rescue and they manage to escape the prison.
Once safe and away from the prison, they part ways, but not before Ray tells Gabriel that should he need him, he must go to the Cleopatra Club and ask for Katherine. They now make certain to bring to task the guys who framed them - Requin tops the list, of course! When they catch up with him, Agent Wyler admits that he was hand-in-glove with Perret, and that the court audio expert Skinner (Michael Jetter) is also in on the deal with the drug lord, and had engineered the tape to trap the detectives. Cash meets Kiki, aka Katherine Tango, Ray’s sister, who helps him escape the Cleopatra when police raids the premises.
 Tango and Cash meet up at Kiki’s house, and Captain Schroeder (Geoffrey Lewis), Tango’s commanding officer, gives them twenty four hours to trace Requin and sort him out. Owen (Michael J.Pollard) who is a weapons expert, arms the two detectives with a high assault vehicle, they trash Perret’s headquarters, unaware that the villain has abducted Kiki and that the building where he is holding her hostage will self destruct with the timer he has; Tango and Cash beat up Requin and his fellow goon, and shoot Perret as he holds a knife to Kiki, the trio escapes, and the building crashes down after them.
Like almost every film of his, critical appreciation always eludes Stallone, but the fans keep proving the critics wrong! Tango and Cash is yet another example of Sylvester’s raging success during that phase and his appeal with audiences worldwide.

Dead Man Walking (1995)

The death penalty has always been controversial, the debate over whether society and laws have the moral and ethical right to take another person's life. There are a large number of countries where the death penalty no longer exists, with the major nations where the death penalty still holds being Russia, China, India, United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia (and other Islamic countries), Singapore, etc. In the United States, the debate has been a long one, with many people being strong proponents of the death penalty, and others arguing against it (this is getting more heated now that DNA testing is revealing wrongful convictions, link to Innocence Project).
Dead Man Walking is based on a book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun, a passionate advocate of abolition of the death penalty in the US. The title of the book and the movie comes from the traditional saying by guards walking the condemned man to his execution, "Dead man walking, dead man walking here".



The movie (directed by Tim Robbins) won great critical acclaim, and was nominated for a number of Academy Awards. It deals with the story of Matthew Poncele (played by Sean Penn - and based on 2 different characters whom Sister Helen Prejean counselled, both of whom were on death row. In the movie, Matthew has been in prison for 6 years now, awaiting his execution for the crime of having killed a teenage couple (after having raped the girl); his accomplice Vitello was sentenced to a lighter prison sentence due to a better lawyer.
Matthew appeals to the Sister to help him in his final appeal; and he is not the image of a repentant person - instead he comes across as both arrogant and sexist, and with not the slightest tinge of remorse. Instead he claims to be innocent. While visiting him over a period of time, she gets to know his mother, as well as the family members of his victims (who cannot understand her motives for trying to save a convicted murderer). Poncele does not get remission, his appeal for denial of execution is denied, and his date for death is set. Sister Prejean will finally hope to save his soul, for him to confess his deeds. In the end, Matthew does indeed do so, confessing his crimes and pleading for forgiveness from the family members of his victims (just before his execution).

Oscars:
Susan Sarandon won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role.
Sean Penn was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Tim Robbins was nominated for Best Director
Main track, "Dead Man Walkin" by Bruce Springsteen nominated for Best Song

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

What can you say about a movie that is deemed to be among the greatest movies ever made, and that is one of the few movies to win the top 5 Oscars (more on that later). It is also another of the movies where the original author, on whose novel the movie is based, finally has a dispute with the released movie. In this case, the movie was based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. Ken was so incensed over a dispute over financial rights that he promised to never see the movie, and so it happened.
The final actors and actresses who played key roles in the movie were not the final choices either. Both Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher were not the first choices for their roles, with more leading stars being proposed, but eventually these two were the final choices, and both went onto win Oscars for their portrayals. The movie itself got great critical acclaim, with most reviewers at the time of release giving a fair amount of praise. And over a period of time, the movie got rated upwards, being deemed among the greatest movies of all times.



The movie was the first movie after It Happened one Night (1934) to win the 5 leading Oscars, and the same feat was only managed after 16 years by Silence of the Lambs. The Oscars won:
* Best Actor for Jack Nicholson
* Best Actress for Louise Fletcher
* Best Direction for Miloš Forman
* Best Picture
* Best Adapted Screenplay for Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman
The movie was also very successful in terms of earning money, far more than expected out of a movie shot in a hospital (and starring the leading man as a person trying to over-turn the dictatorial head of a mental institution who eventually dies). Shot on a budget of approx $ 4 million, the movie earned more than $ 300 million worldwide.
The movie centers on the conflict between a patient at a mental hospital McMurphy (Jack Nocholson), and the element of authority, the supervisory nurse Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). McMurphy is the anti-authoritarian fighter, unwilling to accept authority and repression while the nurse represents the worst of state authority; ultimately the conflict is settled in the nurse's favor when McMurphy goes down fighting. The movie, by Czech Director Milos Forman, could also be seen as a representation of the ongoing conflict between Soviet repression and the urge of the people under their yoke to be free, or die fighting.
McMurphy is a 38 year person having seen frequent conflict with the law, and sentenced to a prison sentence for statutory rape. He is sent to a mental hospital for evaluation due to his frequent defiance of authority; he sees the mental hospital as a place that will be much lighter for serving the sentence, rather than in the labour work farm where he was imprisoned. In the prison, he comes against the rule and process oriented Nurse Mildred Ratched. She is bureaucratic and authoritarian, and various patients in the hospital all suffer under her repression. Some of the main other characters are:
* The silent, huge and towering Indian giant "Chief" Bromden, aka "Broom" (Creek Indian Will Sampson in his film debut) (who pretends to be dumb as his way of dealing with the repression of the nurse)
* The pathetic, incessantly stuttering, paranoid boychild, thirty-year old Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif in his film debut)
* The short, smiling Martini (Danny De Vito in one of his earliest roles) with an immature personality
* An ineffectual, rationalizing intellectual Dale Harding (William Redfield) - suffering from his wife's betrayal
McMurphy starts trying to bring some change in to the lives of the inmates, starting them to play basketball, card games, and many mind games over trying to get permission to watch the opener of the 1963 World Series baseball game (including getting the patients to vote on a change of their schedule so that the game can be watched). He keeps on trying to enthuse the patients, to get them to rise against the repressive authority with which their lives are being run, and constantly tries to be one-up against the nurse.
He starts getting traction, with the patients starting to respond back, to question things more, and use their own independent will. In a breakout, they manage to commander the bus and go for a fishing trip after McMurphy manages to convince the charter boat manager that they are all doctors of the mental hospital, but when they get back, the police are waiting for them. Nurse Ratched is even more determined to keep McMurphy and break him.
She gets a chance when disobedience breaks out, and McMurphy and others assault a guard. They are shackled and then taken for electro-shock treatment, but soon comes back to his normal state and starts planning an escape; this is going to be final chapter of his story in the mental hospital. He plans a party in the hospital (against all rules), and gets his 2 girl-friends Candy and Rose to enter the hospital as part of a wild drinking party. After Billy expresses a desire, McMurphy gets Candy to sleep with Billy so that he can finally get rid of his virginity.
The next morning, all hell breaks lose. In the wild drinking party, McMurphy could have escaped, but choose not to. Nurse Ratched, desiring to re-establish authority, starts with Billy and gets him severely guilt-stricken over his conduct (after using his feelings regarding his authoritarian mother), enough that he starts stammering again, and then cuts his throat. McMurphy then loses control, and tries to throttle Nurse Ratched, at which point he is led away and then, it happens. In order to cut his anti-authority tendencies, he is lobotomized, and returns to the ward as a shell of his former self. His friend, the gentle giant, Bromden realizes what has happened, and liberates McMurphy by smothering him to death with his pillow. He finally realizes McMurphy's dream by escaping from the hospital, but not the other inmates.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

It is now 50 years since this multiple-award winning film was released. The movie depicts the treatment of prisoner of wars of British origin by the Japanese in Burma. The movie won a lot of praise and critical acclaim for the sheer richness of the theme and treatment, as well as setting a high standard for war movie. The movie takes the story forward in some detail, building the plot and keeping viewers hooked, although modern day viewers who watch action movies that have fast car chases, massive explosions, and other such fast action may find the pace of the movie a bit slow. However, 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' is regarded as one of the top 100 movies of all time; it is only when you watch it that you realize that the movie is gripping, building up the story till the final climax.
The Japanese army wants the captured British soldiers to build a strategic bridge, and the senior English officer wants to make it difficult for the Japanese to fulfill their mission. However, in a twist, his obsession with proving the capability of the British lead him to a mission that is actually supporting the enemy. It is only near the end that he comes out of this craziness and reverses himself. Historically, the Japanese army did not have a good record of treatment of Prisoners of War in the Second World War, not very concerned with following the rules of war with regard to treatment of Prisoners of Wars. For an example, refer to the account of the Bataan Death March.


The movie was a multiple Academy award winning movie, winning 7 Oscars out of a total of 8 nominations. The awards won were:
Best Director - David Lean
Best Actor - Alec Guinness
Best Cinematography - Jack Hildyard
Best Picture - Sam Spiegel
Best Film Editing - Peter Taylor
Best Music - Malcolm Arnold
Best Adapted Screenplay - Carl Foreman & Michael Wilson (Honored posthumously in 1984) and Pierre Boulle

In addition, Sessue Hayakawa was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

At that time, director David Lean was not very well known in the United States, being known primarily in England. After 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', he made many acclaimed movies, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, and became counted as one of the greatest directors. He had made a string of movies before this movie, but it was The Bridge over the River Kwai that gave him a lot of fame and built his reputation.
The movie is a very intense movie, and boasted of some great actors to play the different characters:
Alec Guinness as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson
Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito, the prison camp commander
James Donald as Major Clipton, the medical officer
Ann Sears as the nurse at the hospital in Ceylon where Shears recuperates
William Holden as US Navy Commander Shears
Jack Hawkins as Major Warden, a British commando officer

The movie is essentially about the senior British officer of the POW, Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness). The POW are in a camp deep in the Burmese jungle run by the Japanese Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). He is under orders to build a vital railway bridge, and his honor is at stake. When he orders the POW's to build the bridge, Colonel Nicholson refuses to let his officers be part of the labour since they are exempt as per the Geneva conventions. Even after some severe treatment by the Japanese, Colonel Nicholson refuses, earning the respect of his men.
However, after forcing the Japanese officer to break, Colonel Nicholson agrees to help in getting the Bridge built, seeing it as a way to show the capability of the Bridge. He even improves upon the Japanese design, wanting to show that the British are very capable. The paradox is not evident to him in his current frame of mind, that he is helping the Japanese war effort by helping in build a vital bridge. He drives his men, and even his officers to get the work done.
In the meantime, one of the American man, Navy Commander Shears manages to escape, and is enlisted (reluctantly) to help a commando team that will go in to try and destroy the Bridge. And the stage is set for the final confrontation, as Colonel Nicholson almost manages to defeat the efforts of the commandos to destroy the bridge. It is only when the commando team is dying and dead that he comes to his sense, and destroys the bridge himself.

The Green Mile (1999)

The Green Mile is an incredible movie, at one level set in the depths of human despair (where a person can be convicted for a crime to a large degree because he is of an oppressed race (an African-American) in the depths of the American South in 1935 (as racially discriminating a society as possible), and at another level, about the goodness in a person and the gifts that he imparts. The movie is based on a Stephen King novel (published in 1996), and touches on supernatural and paranormal settings in an American prison based on the arrival of Coffey, a convicted murderer waiting on death row.
The movie is set entirely in flashback, with the recounting of the whole tale done in flashback, with one exception, a stunning revelation in the present by the main speaker (currently in a nursing home). The movie was nominated for 4 Academy awards,
* Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Michael Clarke Duncan
* Best Picture — David Valdes, Frank Darabont
* Best Sound Mixing — Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Michael Herbick, Willie D. Burton
* Best Adapted Screenplay — Frank Darabont


However, the movie did not win any of the awards that it was nominated for. It did win other awards, just not the Oscars. One thinks that was a miss. The Green Mile may feel slow to some, but like the director Frank Darabont's earlier Stephen King adaptation, The Shahshank Redemption, the movie is very well adapted from the book, and builds up the whole concept of life in the prison, and then introduces the pivotal character, the Black condemned prisoner on Death Row. Most people will not fail to be moved by this film, by the emotions, and by the state of affairs in which a person is condemned to die even when you know that he is innocent because that is the way things used to happen at that time.
The Green Mile refers to the last stretch of green linoleum that condemned prisoners on death row had to walk before they met their fate on 'Old Sparky', the electric chair used for executions. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), an elderly man in a nursing home, comes in contact with a sadistic employee, which eventually causes him to remember an equally horrible employee (in 1935) along with the great giant Coffey, executed despite being innocent.
Paul is the corrections officer incharge of Death Row inmates and it is his responsibility to take a prisoner on the 'Green Mile' - the last trip of the prisoners. His life takes a turn when a new prisoner arrives. John Coffey (a great role by Michael Clarke Duncan), a great black giant standing 7 foot tall has been convicted of raping and murdering 2 young white girls and is now in Death Role, awaiting his turn with Old Sparky. Soon, they discover something strange about this slow and gentle giant. He is able to display great healing powers by bringing a mouse (Mr. Jingles) back from the dead, cures the urinary infection of Paul, and for good measure, also saves the tumour struck wife of the warden, Hal Moores (James Cromwell). He cannot explain what he does, but he has some great powers.
Into this mixture arrives a sadistic guard, Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison). He is related to the governor, and is able to be sadistic and obnoxious due to this connection. Nobody can control his sadism and ill-treatment of prisoners due to his connections, but a chance comes when a new prisoner William Wharton (Sam Rockwell) arrives. Coffey comes into contact with him, and realizes that William was the actual killer of the 2 girls for which Coffey is on death row. He then displays his powers, getting Wetmore to shoot William, and then to lapse into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. When Paul asks Coffey about all this, he gets shown a vision by Coffey of what actually happened, something that Paul is not able to endure.
However, in spite of his innocence, Coffey is executed in the prison; but this is not the end. Paul, due to physical contact with Coffey, has gained mightily in terms of a life-span. The mouse Mr. Jingles, whom Coffey brought back, is still alive after 50 years, so Paul can only wonder what will happen to his life span. He is already 108 years as of now (as he explains), has outlived his friends and relatives, and feels that the burden of life (which will go on and on - his own Green Mile) is a punishment for having watched an innocent man executed.

Schindler's List (2003)

Few people who have seen the movie can forget the experiences and depth to which humanity can sink (and rise). For people who are not so aware of what the Holocaust was about, or about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews (and on Russians, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and others), the movie brought details in great detail. Using Black & White almost throughout the movie somehow seemed to convey scenes of horror and despair more brutally and clearly.
The film was first offered to Martin Scorcese, and then Roman Polanksi, but then it came to Steven Spielberg, for whom this sort of movie was very different. Steve Spielberg was already known as a gifted and accomplished director, but his movies were more thrillers or science oriented movies (such as Jaws, ET, Indian Jones, Close Encounters of the Third Kind); and here was this subject (based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally) about the Holocaust and the genocide directed by the Nazis, primarily at the Jewish population of Europe.



It is calculated that the 'Final Solution' propounded by the Nazis (Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, etc) in the early stages of the War killed 6 million Jews in Europe during the course of the war. The Nazis were very systematic and documented everything that they did, and their solution of identifying Jews, separating from the rest of the population, and the concentration camps (that used industrial efficiency mass gas chambers) were a solution for mass murder that humankind was not able to visualize. Even though Western Europe and America knew that Jews were being victimized, the level of killings became known only when the concentration camps were over-run by Russian and American soldiers after the fall of the Nazis, and the true story came to light.
In the midst of this state-directed terror where the civilian population mostly stood by and let mass-murder happen (and Europe had gone through repeated bursts of anti-semitism including mass pogroms in Russia), there are stories of people who shed their normal beliefs and played heroic parts in saving people. One of them was Oskar Schindler. His role in saving around 1,100 Jews from being murdered was recognized and he was in fact feted in Israel in 1958, but the story was never very famous. And then came this movie. The movie did not shy away from presenting his negative points; he was a womanizer and unfaithful to his wife, he did not shirk away from setting up his factory using funds almost forced from the rich Jews who had been forced to live in the ghettos, he exploited Jewish workers, he bribed his way through the Nazi machinery; but all those are human weaknesses when compared with the super-human role he played in bribing the Nazi machinery in order to save 1,100 Jews by getting them employed in his factory. He fought for each worker, sometimes going to great distances to save them when they were mistakenly taken away. At some point during the killings, the impact of the genocide made him a person who was determined to use his cleverness and guile to save people.
And it is this portrayal of a complex person, but one who eventually spent everything he had in order to save people that makes this a great movie. Schindler's List was both critically acclaimed and a commercial success. The movie earned over $320 million compared to the $25 million that was spent, and also earned the movie 7 Oscars including the most important ones - Best Picture and Best Director. The 2 great performances of the movie - Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler and Ralph Fiennes playing the brutal SS officer Amon Goth (later caught after the war and hanged for crimes against humanity) were both nominated for Academy Awards, but did not win.
The movie is essentially about Oskar Schindler, out to make an opportunity from the war effort. He sees that war will need supplies, and he proposes to supply crockery to the army; with funding and labour from the oppressed Jews. Through a measure of drinking and fraternizing with the Nazis, he succeeds in getting started; he is not great at running his business but has some excellent support from Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley in a fine role) who is a gifted accountant. Running parallel is the horror story of the German Army marching through Poland, defeating the Polish Army within 2 weeks, and starting the first steps of the repression and murder (ordering the Jewish community to assemble in major cities such as Krakow and live in ghettos from where they will soon be marched off to concentration camps) that will become to be known as the 'Holocaust'. Getting papers stamped with a certificate of being an 'essential' worker will save a person, and that is what Schindler promises.
You see Schindler weaving in between the Nazi machinery, using a mixture of bravado and bribes to get what he wants; and woven in between are the brutalities; a group of SS men shoot a one-armed worker declaring him as useless, the Camp Commandment orders people killed when he feels like it or takes a rifle and randomly shoots a prisoner (with blood staining the snow dead), there is the sorting of items picked from Jews sent to the concentration camps (including jewellery, valuables, teeth with gold fillings, you get the idea), the horror of women being separated from their children. Schindler soon gets obsessed with the idea of saving his workers, and by the end of the war, he has managed to navigate the Nazi bureaucracy enough to save more than a 1,000 people.
This is a cold brutal movie that does not hesitate to show the darkest nature of what humans can turn into, but it also shows the essential humanity of a person from whom such actions were not expected. Schindler's List is a must-watch movie, even though it has been a long time since it was released.

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

You would have heard of the notion, 'Use a thief to catch a thief'; well, this incredible movie takes this notion to a much higher degree. Use the mind of a psychopathic killer to find another one and terminate a series of killings that are happening. The movie, 'Silence of the Lambs' was a terrifying thriller when it burst onto audiences in 1991. Rarely has a movie won 5 or more Oscars, and Silence of the Lambs is one of them. Never before has a scary / horror movie won the Best Picture Oscar, this movie won it. It picked up a total of 5 Academy Awards,
- Jonathan Demme won an Academy Award for Best Director.
- Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster both won Oscars for Best Actor and Actress respectively
- The film won additional Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture
In addition, the performance by Anthony Hopkins as the psychopath in the role of a helper playing a mental cat and mouse game with Jodie Foster was so electrifying that he got the Best Actor award for a role that was the shortest Oscar winning role with only 16 minutes of acting through the movie.



Silence of the Lambs was a tremendous financial success, earning more than $270 million worldwide on a budget of $19 million. But arguably the greatest effect it had was on establishing the reputation of Anthony Hopkins as a great actor. His performance was hailed as a spectacular one.
For all the chill and menace portrayed in the movie, the actual scenes of horror and terror were few, with scenes of actual violence few and far between. The menace was in the depiction, and in the scenes of discussion between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster (4 interviews in all). The discussions between them are one of the highlights between them, with Anthony Hopkins being the expert mind manipulator, and Jodie Foster, the bright but inexperienced FBI rookie.
The movie is about a couple of psychopaths who are cannibals, one of them in jail, and the other outside. There are a number of young woman getting killed and then getting skinned in a gruesome way, and the FBI is desperately trying to find the killer (the more the killings, the more panic there will be in the whole region). The unknown cannibalistic killer has been styled as 'Buffalo Bill'. The only weapon that the FBI has ? It has another equally horrid killer, the former psychologist turned cannibal and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter in custody (and what a custody ! They have to keep him in a jail with strict security arrangements so that he cannot escape).
The head of the FBI behavioral sciences unit, Crawford manipulates a young rookie, still learning, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to see Dr. Lecter so that he might be more pliant at seeing her and agree to cooperate. And so starts the game. She has been advised to not let Dr. Lecter get too close to her mind, but soon she gives up all those thoughts, lets him peer deep inside her thoughts and mind (and he seems to be amazingly perceptive). Thus we learn the origin of the name of the movie. When she was 10, her father (mother had died earlier) was killed on duty, and she was sent to live with some cold relatives on their ranch. She wakes up one day early, and can hear the sounds of young lambs screaming as they are led to their slaughter, and that sound goes deep into her. She tries to escape from there with one of the lambs, but is caught, and then exiled from the ranch. The sound of lambs screaming remains with her. In the end, when she manages to catch the killer, finally she hears silence, and hence the title.
Things escalate when a Senator's daughter in kidnapped; Dr. Lecter and Clarice talk and negotiate, although she is setup to fail, once with her boss Crawford letting her promise some terms to Dr. Lecter even though those are not to be carried through. Dr. Lecter lets out information about Buffalo Bill slowly, but eventually provides her correct information that lets her find Buffalo Bill (and what a confrontation, scary ! She is fighting an enemy who has night vision glasses in a house with lights turned off - this has to be seen for the chills to be experienced).
The one scene where Dr. Lecter escapes, and you get an idea of why the security on him was required, is incredible. He swats and kills 2 police officers, and you get an impression of the cannibalistic streak. The chill is when he calls her up later as she is being feted, and mentions that he is having a friend for dinner (the double meaning is very obvious); and then you see him eying the warden of his prison Chilton (who used to treat him badly) !!

Great Movie: The Shawshank Redemption

Sometimes you come across a movie that is really good, slow, but good. This movie is an adaption of the novel 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' by Stephen King. The movie was an excellent example of story-telling, and was a movie that delineated that hope never dies. It had great performances by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, and the interactions between them was made the storyline such an elegant one. The movie did not set the box office on fire, but over the years, the direction and the storytelling has developed a cult following for this movie that has only made it grow in popularity and a strong following in the DVD market. One criticism of this movie has been the length of the movie (142 minutes), but even for that, the pace at which the story has been developed and presented seems just right. Many critics have nominated this movie to be among the list of top best movies of all time.



The movie essentially has 2 strong characters, with Tim Robbins playing the role of 'Andy Dufresne' and Morgan Freeman as 'Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding'. Tim Robbins plays the role of a banker whose wife and lover was killed and he is convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence even while professing his innocence. He is sentenced to 2 consecutive life sentences in the notorious (and harsh) Shawshank prison in Maine. His introduction to prison life is unsettling, with getting a de-lousing and strong speeches from the Warden Samuel Norton and Chief Prison Guard Captain Byron Hadley. He also witnesses a prisoner breaking down and causing a major disturbance, leading to Captain Hadley beating the prisoner brutally (and the prisoner dying from these wounds later).
In the meantime, Red has been denied parole by the parole board, and in the prison yard, watches the arrival of new prisoners including Tim. Andy slowly develops friends in the prison and eventually becomes friends with Red himself, and Red has a reputation for being able to get things inside the prison. Andy asks for and gets a rock hammer, to be able to pursue him hobby of rock collecting. Andy is assigned to the prison laundry, and in one of the seamier sides of the prison, he is continually harassed by a group of inmates known as 'The Sisters'. They regularly harass and rape him.
And then Andy's luck changes, with Captain Hadley getting to know about his financial skills, and he wants Andy to setup a tax shelter for him. He starts to get some preferential treatment and gets assigned to a lighter service of the prison library. Andy's fame as a financial help spreads and he is now advising a number of other prisoners, guards and even the Warden. He is also allowed to setup his own team, and he selects Red to be on the team. In a reminder of the painful life of a ex-con, an old prisoner who has been granted parole (but has been in jail for so long that he no longer recognizes life outside the prison) has major difficulties in adjusting to life outside the prison, and eventually commits suicide.
The changed fortune of Andy is much clearer now when he is again assaulted by 'The Sisters', but now the others beat up these leader of this group so badly that Andy is never threatened again. Things keep on progressing, and the Warden now has Andy to setup a new identity so that the Warden can benefit from the work that he is making the prisoners do. Things change when a new prisoner, Tommy joins and mentions that he knows of facts that would prove that Andy was innocent. The Warden is fearful of Andy getting out and revealing his financial planning, and shows his truly evil nature. He gets Captain Hadley to kill Tommy and pushes Andy into solitary confinement for 2 months, at the end of which Andy emerges a seemingly broken man.
And this is where the story finally gets revealed. Andy vanishes, having escaped from the prison after digging a tunnel for 19 years. He takes the identity of the man he had created for the warden, and gets the Warden and Captain implicated for their scam He eventually goes to Mexico where Red joins him once he is freed on parole.