It should not be surprising in the least that genre fans have a real emotional investment in Hannibal Lecter (or “Lektor” if you’re a Brian Cox fan). The Silence of the Lambs was something that could have been deemed impossible before it happened: A horror-thriller winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and finally our parents didn’t look at us as though we were nuts for liking gore.
So it is fitting that many horror fans will walk out of Hannibal Rising spitting mad. In spite of the the title, the character and Thomas Harris, the author of the Lecter novels actually stepping in to write the script, this is NOT Hannibal Lector. Anthony and Jodie are on Broadway, and everyone on display here is the shitty little touring company that came to your shitty little town. Lecter is a character that has had four fine movies to showcase him, and Hannibal Rising doesn’t do justice to any of them.
But it’s funny, though. It’s ass as a Hannibal Lecter movie, but as a stand-alone, slightly twisted revenge thriller all on it’s lonesome? It ain’t bad… It’s pretty good, truth be told. Left to my own devices, I would actually recommend it, but then I’d see the title and convict this picture of false advertising.
Gaspard Ulliel (and don’t try to pronounce it properly, you’ll get paralysis of the mandible) plays The World’s Favorite Sociopath at age nineteen, after he escapes the orphanage he was in and tracks down his uncle. The uncle is dead but the wife he took is still there in the chateau in France. She is Lady Murasaki, played with trademark reserve by Gong Li, who is more than willing to take care of her orphaned nephew… Lucky fucker…
The more young Hannibal grows, the more of his blocked past comes into view and the more he begins to exhibit those ol’ Lecter traits that we all know and love. More than this, I shall not say. Some unlucky person may come upon our fine site who hasn’t seen The Silence of the Lambs or any movie that knocked it off, has been living in a cave for nigh on sixteen years and inexplicably lacks the ability to put two and two together.
Let’s start at the top with Gaspard French-Name. It’s just prevalent right off the bat that this mere whisp of a boy is not Hannibal Lecter. He looks a little like Crispin Glover, point of fact. Let’s just hope Anthony Hopkins doesn’t stand in close next to Mr. Ulliel, lest he fart and knock him over from the sheer force. He’s, um… He’s a pussy. But even though he ain’t Lecter, he ain’t bad either. Truth be told, he is quite sympathetic as the Wronged Pussy Seeking Revenge. And maybe pussies everywhere will use Hannibal Rising as a battle-cry, so they may wave their hankies, hitch up their support-hose and march! March! TO VICTORY! Or at least less crushing defeat.
I don’t have anything against Gong Li in the film either. In fact I’m quite happy that this striking Hong Kong import is getting her due with four wide-release movies in just over a year, but… What the fuck is she DOING here? I thought she was a little classier than the stinky revenge flick. Can anyone help me with this?
Hannibal Rising is directed by Peter Webber, who did the arty Scarlett Johansen flick Girl With A Pearl Earring. What drew him to this material is beyond me… Oh yeah! Money. Anyway, if no other aspect of this film holds up to it’s four predecessors, at least the actual, physical direction does. Hannibal Rising is a very good looking film, with some imagery that borderlines on striking. In particular when Lecter kills a victim in a grizzly way and it cuts to a shot of a flowing river with a crimson streetlight shining on its surface, lending a sanguine feel… Now that’s just neat.
Fans of the books may want to know how Thomas Harris did in his first at-bat as a screenwriter, and that is “not very well.” It seems that the author himself has a hard time translating his own terse and wintry prose into another medium. The plot movements are slow and his dialogue is awkward and uninspired. But when you’ve been adapted by guys like Michael Mann, Ernest Lehman, Ted Tally and David Mamet have adapted your work, it’s hard following them up, even if you did originate the works those fine writers interpreted. Also, I have heard complaints from various critics, screaming “Why demystify the scariest villain of our time?” Firstly, Lecter was never a villan, and secondly do you think Harris owns Lecter anymore? The cannibal belongs to Hopkins, so I see this as some mad grab for reasserted control. Kind of like how Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes before the public threw a bitch-fit. This in itself adds an element of literary fascination, if far removed and maybe only for me.
Bottom line? It ain’t your Daddy’s Hannibal, and it ain’t anyone else’s either. It’s old Coke versus New Coke. So you can bitch about how it was or appreciate the meager charms of how it is. Most of you will chose the former, and I must act accordingly in my review even though I chose the latter.
2 1/2 out of 4
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