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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
Directed by: Peter Webber
Written by: Thomas Harris, adapted from novel: "Behind the Mask"
Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans
Running time: 117 minutes
Released: 02/09/07
Rated R for strong grisly violent
content and some language/sexual references. |
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"...nothing in it
vanquishes the sensation that we're being sold something
superfluous -- like a service contract for a carton of
eggs."
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Other than those likely to inherit a bit
of Thomas Harris' estate, is there really anyone interested in
perpetuating the story of Hannibal Lecter?
Harris first imagined the Luciferian physician with the delicate
manners and taste for human flesh in the 1981 novel "Red Dragon,"
which was filmed five years later as "Manhunter" (with Brian Cox as
Lecter). But it took the 1987 novel and, especially, the 1991 film
"The Silence of the Lambs" to make the character a permanent part of
our collective psyche. Anthony Hopkins hissed and insinuated his way
to an Oscar in the role, which he reprised in two lucrative
follow-ups: the baroque sequel "Hannibal" and a workmanlike remake
of "Red Dragon."
For anyone except the people who sell Harris cars and wine, that
might have been enough: a trilogy about an immortal villain who
ranks with Satan, Iago, Dracula, and Freddy Krueger in the pantheon
of imagined bad guys.
But no. Harris couldn't let Lecter be, and so "Hannibal Rising," a
novel revealing just how the monstrous Dr. Lecter got to be that
way. And, as surely as a dog's feast of a box of Oreos is followed
by somebody's having to clean the floor, here's the movie.
Directed by Peter Webber ("The Girl With the Pearl Earring"),
"Hannibal Rising" teems with blood and gore, and actors with
ridiculous accents, and absurd conveniences of plot, and dialogue
funnier than that in most contemporary comedies (probably
unintentional, but it's hard to say for sure).
We start in 1944, when young Hannibal's family home is under siege
by marauding Nazis and Lithuanian locals (led by Rhys Ifans)
conscripted to do the Germans' especially dirty work. In quick
order, the elder Lecters are dead, the kids are captured by the
Lithuanians, and young Hannibal watches in horror as his beloved
younger sister, Mischa, is eaten by the starving bad guys.
Jump forward a decade or so to France, whence Hannibal (now played
by Gaspard Ulliel) has fled in search of an uncle. Alas, the fellow
is dead. But he is survived, conveniently, by a beautiful widow
(Gong Li) who, conveniently, teaches Hannibal swordsmanship.
As he incubates a taste for cutting folks apart, Hannibal nurses a
thirst for revenge on the monsters who devoured Mischa. The majority
of the film tracks his efforts to find and destroy them.
Ulliel ("The Brotherhood of the Wolf," "A Very Long Engagement")
cuts a striking figure, with jet black hair, a devilish chin and a
dimple on one cheek that seems partly a scar and partly a mocking
third eye winking its bearer's heartless intent. He tries gamely to
create a character who could morph into the stolid, diabolical
Hopkins -- he speaks slowly from beneath hooded, staring eyes, for
instance -- but his work never approaches, say, Robert De Niro's
brilliant reverse engineering of Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in
"The Godfather, Part II."
It's a handsome film, but the pace is continually gummy and the
set-ups stiff and artificial. Most crucially, nothing in it
vanquishes the sensation that we're being sold something superfluous
-- like a service contract for a carton of eggs. Ultimately, neither
the director nor the star can be blamed for the obvious reality that
a commercially motivated enterprise like "Hannibal Rising" never had
a chance of getting off the ground. |
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HANNIBAL
RISING ©
2007 MGM Distribution Company, The Weinstein Company.
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2007 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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