Hannibal Review
by "JONATHAN RICHARDS" (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)February 18th, 2001
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
HANNIBAL
Directed by Ridley Scott
Screenplay by David Mamet & Steven Zaillian
UA North, De Vargas R 131 min.
Ten years ago, Clarice Starling was a gawky, striving young trainee, eager to shed her redneck background and find acceptance in the exciting and glamorous world of the FBI. Now she's a veteran agent, at the top of her field and her game. We see all that in the opening sequence of Hannibal, the profit-trumps-art sequel to 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. Agent Starling is in charge of a high-risk operation involving the Bureau, Justice, and the DC police. She's a tough, no-nonsense pro, and when the bust starts to go bad, she shuts it down. But someone pulls a trigger, the street erupts in gunfire, and it's a public relations disaster for Clarice.
But it's an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good, and her disgrace is catnip to Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), her nemesis at the Justice Department, who wants to see her disgraced and in his bed, in whatever order. It also catches the attention of her old adversary Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), who has been living a quiet (vegetarian?) life in Florence, masquerading as a lecturer on Renaissance art. He gets in touch, and soon Clarice is back on his trail.
They used to be a fun couple, and you can understand the temptation to get them back together again. But the dynamic has altered. For one thing, Lecter's at large, and that isn't nearly as tension-generating as a caged Lecter, watching with quiet smiling menace from behind glass and bars and restraints and a hockey mask for the chance that he and we know must come. And Clarice has changed. It's not just the externals, that make-over that has her looking more like Julianne Moore than Jodie Foster. It's the age, the experience, the toughness. 20
The best thing in this movie is the wonderful Giancarlo Gianninni (Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away and Seven Beauties), whose baggy eyes and grizzled face could send shivers through the face-lift factories of Hollywood. He plays Pazzi (an international play on words that suggests both "crazy" and "patsy"), a Florentine police inspector with a young wife (Francesca Neri) who likes expensive things -- things he could afford if he collected the price on the head of Hannibal Lecter, whose identity he has sniffed out. Starling warns him against it, but a middle-aged man with an expensive young wife doesn't always listen to reason. The $3 million bounty has been put up by Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a billionaire who as a young man was convinced by the diabolical Hannibal to skin his own face and feed it to the dogs. Verger, whose face now resembles a rubber glove left too long under the sink, wants to feed his old antagonist to a pack of man-eating boars, feet first. He has revenge issues.
Moore does well, bringing a bug-eyed obsessiveness to her foster-performance as Agent Starling. And of course Hopkins, with his impeccable manners, silken voice, and indulgent smile, remains the sociopathic cannibal you'd most like to have over for dinner (well, maybe not dinner, maybe charades.) But without her guileless youthful zeal, the Starling-Lecter thing just doesn't have the former charm. Cinematographer John Mathiesen puts a lovely dark patina on old Florence, and David Mamet and Steve Zaillian have written some witty dialogue to flesh out Thomas Harris's novel, but director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) misses the sly touch that made Jonathan Demme's original work so well.
This is not a scary movie. There are no screams in it. It's more of a repellent movie, and the principal sounds heard from the audience come during the brain-teasing climax, in the form of gags and groans. Ultimately, it is a movie that really did not need to be made. Its only Oscar prospect is Jodie Foster, for wisely passing it up.
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