ONE HARSH CRITIC: HANNIBAL RISING

Hannibal Lecter may be the most intriguing villain to appear on screen.  There, I said it. But that statement should be nothing new.  Lecter's wisdom and ability to read people along with a heart devoid of morals, makes him the kind of threat that's not only terrifying, but its monstrous -- it's simply impossible to concieve the sort of evil that Anthony Hopkins so gracefully depicts in Hannibal Lecter.

And then comes Hannibal Rising.

After seeing this latest cinematic installment of the Lecter saga, sadly, his persona has been cheapened. A character that was once hard to look in the eyes (even on screen), has been reduced to bad acting, corny dialogue, and a distracting facial scar. 

The story of the film does shed a little insight onto early stages of the cannibalistic psychologist's life. Indeed, bits and pieces are interesting, but there's nothing in this film that can justify Lecter's unabated lack of emotion or value of human life -- perhaps its not possible to ever justify why he is the monster he is. It just would have been nice if director Peter Webber had tried a little harder to bring writer Thomas Harris' vision of budding cruelty to life. 

The film begins with young Hannibal and his family, driven from their castle in war torn Eastern Europe.  After witnessing his family's murder by allied air attacks, Hannibal and his sister Mischa are kidnapped by war profiteers, who eventually eat the younger Lecter. The remainder of the film is spent as a much older Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel) seeks out his sister's murders.  One by one he tracks them down and in the meantime, he has a subtle love affair with his widowed aunt and randomly learns the way of the Samurai. After already becoming a psychopathic killer, his breaking point supposedly comes when his aunt tells him there's nothing left in him to love. Call me crazy, but as soon as you find yourself eating human cheeks, you've fallen off your rocker long before.

While Ulliel tried his best to portray the young psychopath, he had some pretty big shoes to fill.  Hopkins, one of the best actors of our time, portrays the cannibal to perfection, and as he created the visual persona of said villain, perhaps its unfair to compare the two. I did however find myself reminded of Stewie Griffin from time to time as Ulliel tried to make every thing he did look as sinister as possible.  One scene in particular could have been subtitled, "Look at me... I'm so evil and I'm dialing the phone." Apparently, a sly smile and the slowing of all actions to the speed of a cooling lava flow translates to evil (and lucky for the audience, it was a rotary phone.)

The writing, while Thomas Harris can be credited with one of my favorite novels of all times (guess which one), wasn't much better.  One liners and random actions seem to be attempts at justification for Lecter's killing patterns, but they simply don't play out.  It's a huge leap, for example, that because Lecter was once told that the cheeks are the best part of the animal, that he would begin eating the flesh off human faces. These laughable lines and examples of foreshadowing smack with the mental image of Harris winking and saying, "See... That's why Lecter does that." It just doesn't work. 

In the end, this film doesn't stand up to the other Lecter stories, but you can't (or shouldn't) really expect it to.  The novel written much later than the original seems like the answer of a demanding fan base, wanting to know where the unquenchable evil that is Hannibal Lecter came from.  Take away the captivating preconceptions of who this killer is, and you might have a good film on your hands, but that's simply not possible to do. Oh, and it would also need to be re-written, re-cast and re-shot.

Maybe that's too harsh, but all I'm saying is -- if you love Lecter, put in that DVD of Silence of the Lambs that you should already own, and enjoy him the way he's supposed to be enjoyed.  I'm sure you could find something better to spend your ten bucks on. 

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Josh Gloer, Movie Correspondent

You can find Josh's column One Harsh Critic, published every Sunday night at http://oneharshcritic.gather.com.

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