Hannibal Lecter, as he appeared in Silence of the Lambs and Manhunter (the first movie based on Red Dragon) was more of an oddity behind glass than an outright threat. A consultant, if you will, that helps the police catch much more ghoulish, less gentlemanly serial killers. Somewhere along the line thought, Thomas Harris, Lecter’s creator, lost his mojo and Hannibal the Cannibal became a parody of his formerly sly greatness. With Hannibal, Harris tried to turn him into a typical horror movie monster, which doesn’t quite work when your monster confesses to eating liver with fava beans. And now Harris is trying to humanize Hannibal by giving him the prequel treatment with Hannibal Rising.



In Rising, we see young Hannibal living with his wealthy family in Lithuania in 1944 and naturally they get caught between the advancing Red Army and the retreating Nazis. As the Lecter family attempts to ride out the war in a cabin off the beaten trail, they are discovered by a Russian tank crew looking for a place to fill their canteens. But a sneak attack launched by a German fighter destroys the tank and kills everyone on scene except Hannibal and his little sister Mischa. The two try to survive all alone, but they’re found by war profiteers who plan to use the children for cover if they get caught, however, they instead find a much more horrid use for young Mischa when hunger begins to set in. After spending time in a Soviet orphanage, Hannibal runs away to France to find his aunt and the men responsible for the horrible fate of his sister.



Why, oh why was this ever considered for the making, let alone for the fact that it actually got made? Hannibal Lecter isn’t Batman or James Bond or even Darth Vader, our understanding of the character is not helped by some hackneyed origin story about a young man driven by revenge. There was a mystique about Hannibal, especially as played by Anthony Hopkins in Silence, the idea that Hannibal was all the more frightening because we didn’t know what compelled him to kill people and eat them. He certainly didn’t fill the stereotypical look and feel of your average movie cannibals which are nearly always portrayed as backwood, inbred hicks.



Now we have the image of a pissed off young man, played ably enough by Gaspard Ulliel, but clearly someone had the fine idea to Tiger Beat up one of the most frightening figures in movie history. Little sly asides referencing Hannibal’s future are dropped in play, like a certain stylistically similar mask to the one he eventual wears when he meets Senator Martin in Silence and Hannibal’s predilection against the free-range rude.



No matter what though, everything about Hannibal Lecter that’s come before is undermined by the fact that here he is portrayed like an impudent child retaliating against school bullies. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if Hannibal just started killing people out of some classist compulsion and thinking himself justified in his killings. Of course, revenging against the guys that ate your sister would be motivation to make anyone sympathetic.



With little hints of originality plot-wise, and a total tear down of a once great and ghastly character, the only thing that Rising had left to it is that it is rather expertly made. Director Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) really knows how to frame a shot and paces the movie quite well, but the real star is the stunning cinematography of Ben Davis who gives every setting its own particular look and feel. The movie really is technically excellent, which is why I’m ranking it where I am. It’s just too bad that Webber and his crew weren’t given something really good to chew on from Harris, who for the first time has written the script for a Hannibal movie as opposed to just the book it is based on.



If this is an indication of what we can expect from any future Hannibal movies then I say that this is as good a time as any to pull the plug and be done with it. Thomas Harris clearly has no idea what he’s doing, that is to say if he ever did because this is the second Hannibal story he’s blown, both of which featured Hannibal as it’s main attraction. (Both of them even had Hannibal in the title.) I think the “Jesse getting crushed by Free Willy” director’s cut ending said it best when the line was uttered, “Ech! What a mess.”