by Anthony Bruno

Movie Poster: Hannibal Rising

Bringing up the rear in the parade of Hannibal Lecter films (Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Hannibal) is the latest, Hannibal Rising, the back-story to America's favorite serial killer.  This prequel is meant to show us the confluence of events that made Hannibal the Cannibal the monster that he is.  Unfortunately it's a case of too much information.  The sauce smothers the taste of the entrée.

Gaspard Ulliel as a young Hannibal Lecter

Directed by Peter Webber, who previously directed Girl with a Pearl Earring, the film perfectly captures the grime and elegance of post-World War II Europe.  As Hannibal the young man (Gaspard Ulliel) and his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), dine at a French bistro, you can almost smell the aroma of simmering coq au vin.  The opening scenes of Russian soldiers battling Nazis on the grounds of the Lecter family estate are riveting, particularly the standoff between a Soviet tank and a German warplane.  The look of the film is tantalizing, but the meat of the story is overdone and not as savory or satisfying as the previous Lecter films.

Actress Gong Li

In terms of blood and gore, nothing in Hannibal Rising is left to the imagination.  In nearly every scene, something or someone is slaughtered, dissected, or butchered.  Roasts are hacked from sides of beef, cadavers are probed, a fish is gutted, an uncooked woodcock devoured (feathers and all), villains of all sorts and degrees are sliced, diced, speared, and forked.  Even in quiet scenes, a pile of guts or a severed head is artfully placed to catch the eye, like a bowl of fruit in a painting.  A human heart on the slab, a head in the flames of a crematory oven, a severed hand on the counter—all routine bric-a-brac in the world of Hannibal Lecter.  The cumulative effect of all this gore isn't overwhelming disgust, as one might expect, but rather a pervasive numbness.

Book cover: Hannibal Rising

Written by Thomas Harris, based on his own book of the same name, the film fails to give the audience what it craves most, a hero to root for.  As a boy, little Hannibal witnesses the deaths of his parents and his beloved little sister Mischa, and it's his plight we follow.  But his hero journey takes a wrong turn when he finds his way to France and his aunt, Lady Murasaki, the widow of his father's brother.  Hannibal's quest is to avenge the murder and cannibalization of little Mischa who was cooked and devoured by a gang of starving Lithuanian dead-enders who survived by doing the dirtiest of dirty jobs for the Nazis.  But Hannibal's first victim is a boorish butcher who insults his aunt but isn't one of the gang of grisly gourmands.  What's worse, Hannibal enjoys the experience of slicing and decapitating the butcher with Lady Murasaki's ancestral samurai sword.  When the inscrutable lady learns of her nephew's crime, it hardly registers in her face.  It's hard for an audience to identify with a pair of characters this emotionally detached.

Actor Dominic West

Along comes Inspector Popil (Dominic West of HBO's The Wire) who figures out what Hannibal is up to but doesn't exactly break a sweat in his efforts to send the young slayer to the guillotine.  (Oh, yes, we see that method of execution, too.)  Popil dresses well and has good manners, but that's about all.  He's no one's idea of a dogged detective and comes up short as a hero.  Where's Clarice Starling when we need her? 

Jodie Foster with Anthony Hopkins behind

Hannibal pursues his mission, taunting his targets before shooting, strangling, or skewering them, but the accomplishment of his goals has all the emotional punch of watching someone shopping for groceries.  He saves the leader of the gang of thugs, Grutas (Rhys Infans) for next to last, and at the climax just before Hannibal is about to give the bastard his just desserts, Grutas reveals the secret that has haunted Hannibal's subconscious since that horrible day he lost his sister.  I won't spoil the big revelation for those who plan to see the film, but let's just say that it changes Hannibal's dining habits forever.

Hannibal Rising, the film, is far more interesting than its source material, but it suffers from the same anemia as the book.  It's hard to work up much enthusiasm for a kid who eats people and enjoys it.  Perhaps if Harris had given him the more typical serial-killer evolution, taking gradual, cautious steps from petty crimes to bolder infractions before venturing into murders, young Hannibal might have earned more of our sympathies.  For all the death and destruction in the film, there isn't a single moment that packs the gut-clenching wallop of Anthony Hopkins's Lecter brushing fingers with Jodie Foster's Agent Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.  The makers of Hannibal Rising show us so much that nothing is left to the imagination.  Unlike the older Hannibal, young Hannibal doesn't know how to toy with our anticipations.  After a while our emotions become as lifeless as Lady Murasaki's.  Though the film is certainly entertaining in parts, it leaves you longing for the man who introduced the world to fava beans as a side dish for sautéed human liver.  Hannibal Rising has plenty of blood and splatter, but sadly it has very little juice.

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