Hannibal Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)November 16th, 2001
HANNIBAL
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2001 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
"Hannibal," the long-awaited sequel to 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs," arrives in theaters with its reputation far preceding it. The first film about the notorious Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter was a critical and commercial success (although, technically speaking, "'Lambs" was the second film to feature the haute cuisine of serial killers; "Manhunter"--also based on the novel by Thomas Harris--included an appearance by Lecter five years earlier).
"'Lambs" also managed something which only two other films in the history of cinema had achieved before it: won that year's top five Academy Awards® (for best film, director, actor, actress, and screenplay). Clearly America had taken the fava bean-loving sociopath to their hearts.
A decade later, producers Mr. & Mrs. Dino De Laurentiis have whipped up an A-list cast and crew to further the good doctor's grisly winings and dinings. Anthony Hopkins is back in the title role, a man who would cut off your nose to spite your face (and then feed it to the dogs), and without him there would be no film. He's right back in character, with his polite "okey-dokey" patter and uncanny ability to make his victims squirm by uncloseting their most personal of skeletons. Julianne Moore ("Magnolia") plays his tough-as-nails adversary/lust object, FBI agent Clarice Starling and she's stiff and freckled and no-nonsense-y. In the director's chair we have the ultra-capable Ridley Scott ("Gladiator"), hardly likely to shoot a scene out of focus or splice two scenes together in the wrong order (hence the **), and the film is co-written by David Mamet (all those David Mamet screenplays) and Steve Zaillian ("A Civil Action").
On paper, therefore, we're looking at, what?, five more Oscars® (or six if you include Best Waste of Giancarlo Giannini).
Not so I'm afraid. Oh so not so. They forgot one thing: suspense. There's either too much story or not enough story--it's hard to tell which--but at no point in the film is there any kind of dramatic tension (the only surprise is "Why?" given the film's pedigree). Clarice is Stateside, puzzling, and Lecter is living the high life in Florence--nice Chiantis, operettas, Gucci with everything--and for the longest time they stay separated by silence and continental divides and personal history, with Lecter taking time out for culinary wisecracks while Clarice clicks away with her mouse and pours over printouts. Some new evidence has emerged, it transpires, courtesy Lecter's fourth victim, the only one left alive, a hideously deformed multimillionaire with a face like a choux bun with all the cream sucked out, who's confined to a wheelchair and hell bent on revenge. Revenge that involves monster Sardinian hogs (a particularly unpleasant sequence of events I should warn you ahead of time).
That's none other than Gary Oldman, by the way, uncredited under all that goo.
Clarice and Lecter finally do come face to face, briefly, in the penultimate scene. Before then, an Italian policeman (Giannini, who clearly thought a disembowelment would look good on his résumé) foolishly attempts to apprehend the master cannibal for his own financial gain. Bad idea. Typically the responsible thing to do when offering a reward for someone on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List is to state absolutely positively not to attempt to engage or apprehend this person yourself but to call the cops. Here the feds expect a fingerprint!
The film climaxes with the most revolting and truly outlandish dinner party since "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" (with Ray Liotta showing that he has a head for comedy). Let's just say that some people like to eat Häagen-Dazs right out of the container and leave it at that. But that's not the end of the tastelessness--the filmmakers tag on a spurious epilogue at 30,000 feet that's just plain tacky.
As Jimmy Goldman once put it, what kind of spindly, ricket-ridden, milky, semi-witted, wizened, dim-eyed, gammy-handed, limpy line of things band together on a Saturday night and excuse this for entertainment? The pile of vomit left by a theater patron as they made a hasty exit from the film was probably the best free publicity "Hannibal" could ever have hoped for, and it pretty much summed up my feelings towards the whole diabolical affair.
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David N. Butterworth
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