The Silence of the Lambs

FBI trainee Clarice Starling is pulled from the Academy by Behavioral Science Unit chief Jack Crawford and assigned to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant but deeply dangerous psychiatrist serving life in a maximum-security asylum for a series of murders and acts of cannibalism. Crawford believes Lecter's psychological insight may help profile 'Buffalo Bill,' an active serial killer who abducts young women, keeps them captive while starving them to loosen their skin, and then murders and skins them — apparently attempting to construct a suit made of human skin. Lecter agrees to engage with Starling, but only on his own terms: he will offer clues in exchange for personal confessions. Starling reveals that her father, a marshal, was killed when she was a child, and that she was placed on a farm where she was traumatized by the screaming of lambs being slaughtered — a memory she has never been able to escape. Lecter, in turn, offers observations: Buffalo Bill is not genuinely transsexual but a self-loathing man who falsely believes himself to be one, rejected by gender-reassignment programs and acting out a delusional identity. Meanwhile, Buffalo Bill kidnaps Catherine Martin, the daughter of a prominent U.S. Senator, raising the stakes dramatically. Lecter is transferred to Memphis at the Senator's request in exchange for a supposed profile of Buffalo Bill — but he has provided false information. He brutally kills his guards and escapes, disappearing abroad. Working from clues Lecter had embedded in case file annotations, Starling independently identifies Buffalo Bill as Jame Gumb, a former tailor. She locates his home in Belvedere, Ohio, and arrives alone. Inside, she discovers Catherine Martin still alive, trapped at the bottom of a dry well in the basement. Gumb pursues Starling through the darkened basement using night-vision goggles while she is effectively blind. He comes close enough to cock his revolver, revealing his position by sound; Starling fires toward the noise and kills him. Catherine is rescued. The film closes with Starling's graduation from the FBI Academy. Lecter calls her from an unspecified tropical location, asking cryptically whether the lambs have finally stopped screaming in her nightmares, then ends the call — remarking that he is about to have 'an old friend for dinner,' implying he is about to kill his former asylum director, Dr. Chilton, who has arrived in the same location.

Sources: Wikipedia