Hannibal Review
by Homer Yen (homer_yen AT yahoo DOT com)February 19th, 2001
“Hannibal” – You May Want to Pass on Seconds
by Homer Yen
(c) 2001
Imagine creating a gourmet meal with the finest of ingredients, the most exotic of spices, and the choicest cuts of beef. Once prepared, however, you commit a culinary sin by cooking it in the microwave oven. The result is an uneven offering that looks good on the outside but in reality, lacks flavor and consistency. “Hannibal,” the long-awaited and highly anticipated follow-up to 1991’s “Silence of the Lambs,” feels very much like this gourmet gaffe. Even a glass of Chianti wouldn’t make this go down any
easier.
It’s blandness and inconsistency stems from the material’s source, adapted from Thomas Harris’s book, “Hannibal.” Like the microwave oven, the novel cooked up an uneven tale that was widely regarded as a grisly but dramatically flat offering.
Happily, much of what we love and fear about Hannibal Lecter remains intact. He can’t resist creating an impromptu Q&A session to delve into the thoughts of others. He still closely follows the career of FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) whose mix of vulnerability and inaccessibility is oddly attractive to him. Most of all, he still possesses a sickening appetite for ‘brain food.’
His evil actions, however, now seem more like a defensive mechanism, thus softening him to a certain degree. With his freedom, he doesn’t possess the fiery, caged-animal zeal that helped him to become one of the most cinematically memorable characters of all time. The menacing nature that he possesses is more a result of how we remember him from “Silence of the Lambs” rather than how he is developed here.
The story plays like a two-act manhunt with a twist. In the first act, we learn that Dr. Lecter (a delightfully creepy Anthony Hopkins) has been hiding in Florence, Italy since he escaped eight years ago from FBI custody. An ambitious but foolhardy detective (excellent Euro actor Giancarlo Giannini) is pursuing him. It’s a slick cat-and-mouse sequence. But the cunning Lecter is not such easy prey, and it soon becomes unclear just who is the cat and who is the mouse.
While he is considered something of a monster in the first half (“Bowels in or bowels out?” he asks a victim before dispatching him), Dr. Lecter’s role significantly changes in the second act. Back in America, a backstabbing bureaucracy has unjustly punished Starling. It’s actually a complex ruse to flush Dr. Lecter out from hiding. Now our favorite cannibal assumes the role of an anti-hero while the normally strong-willed Starling becomes something of a damsel in distress. These characterizations might have a few adamant fans screaming murder. At least the scriptwriters had enough sense to stay away from the book’s ending, which would have had these two fall in love.
What it lacks in story, it tries to make up with style. “Hannibal” is a handsome film. Its lush visuals, from the gothic atmosphere of Florence to the dank dungeon-like conditions of the research room where Starling hunches over a computer screen, are beautiful. A haunting musical score, reminiscent of angels-in-mourning, also powers its dark feel. Meanwhile, Hopkins and Moore give compelling
performances.
Unfortunately, it lacks the emotional roundness and the mesmerizing character interplay that made “Silence” so golden. “Hannibal” is sumptuous looking, but it never quite dramatically satisfies. The lesson learned is that bad material will make mincemeat out of a good film.
Grade: B-
S: 1 out of 3
L: 2 out of 3
V: 3 out of 3
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