Hannibal Rising

HANNIBAL RISING (2007) - Feb. 10, 2007
I think I first suspected that this wasn't going to be a good movie when the bad guy -- I guess to make sure that the audience wasn't confused about how truly evil he was -- took a big, enthusiastic bite out of a dead bird, feathers and all. The clincher came at the moment when Hannibal Lecter put on a mask that bore more than a passing resemblance to the one he famously wore in Silence of the Lambs. You could just see the director furiously winking at the audience, "hey, remember how good Silence of the Lambs was??" This was a bad movie, witlessly directed by Peter Webber, and written without an ounce of subtlety by Thomas Harris. Everything about this movie was just so over-the-top, from the raw bird-eating bad guy to Hannibal himself. It probably didn't help that Gaspard Ulliel sneered his way through the entire film, giving a performance that can best be described as one-note (and that doesn't even begin to hint at the depth that Anthony Hopkins brought to the part). The film was also quite slow-paced, and I'm really not sure why -- it certainly wasn't to develop the characters, as they were about as fleshed out as the people in a straight-to-video slasher film. Blech. *1/2