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All Movie Info
Directed By
Ridley Scott
Written By:
David Mamet, Steven Zaillian
Cast:
Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta, Frankie Faison, Giancarlo Giannini, Francesca Neri, Zeljko Ivanek, Hazelle Goodman, David Andrews, Francis Guinan, Enrico Lo Verso
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Hannibal (2001)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
July 13th, 2007
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'Hannibal' comes closer to showing us more of the monster and less of the man resting within Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), who is now on the loose, living in Italy, under the name of Dr. Fell, presenting lectures on literature and art, watching the opera, hob-nobbing with cultural elites. He still has his intelligence, charm, and elegance, but here, he is reduced in many ways to his base instincts, a ghoulish murderer, more at home in a slasher flick than in what hopes to be an engaging thriller. Clarice Starling, the FBI agent he became so infatuated with in Silence of the Lambs, has botched an operation and left several people dead. Her career is in jeopardy, and this takes a toll on her. Lecter dares her to find him.
He has a cult following, it would seem, with Internet fan sites and Lecter memorabilia fetching high prices on Ebay. Clarice visits Barney, the orderly at the hospital Lecter escaped from, currently in retirement. An Italian detective named Pazzi (Giannini) stumbles across Lecter's Most Wanted profile online, and also the huge bounty put on his head by his former patient Mason Verger (Oldman), a rich pedophile who survived Lecter's assault, and is now an invalid and horribly disfigured. Clarice also clashes with Paul Krendler (Liotta), a petty bureaucrat who likes to act tough and try to intimindate those around him, especially women. A crazy caper follows, with Pazzi and Verger's minions trying to capture Lecter, Starling trying to locate him before they do, and Lecter coming back to America to evade his pursuers, and making contact with Starling in the process.
This is all set against a backdrop of gruesome, sadistic, almost comical violence, with intestines falling out of a person's abdomen, a man cutting off his face with broken glass and feeding it to his dogs, and, a small segment of an exposed brain being fried on a skillet and eaten. It is all rather gratuitous. Hopkins is, as we would expect, marvelous, as cunning and as wryly amusing as ever he was, we love him even at his most loathsome. Julianne Moore replaces Jodie Foster, and offers a newer, older, more action-oriented and cynical Clarice, which seems odd when compared to the original character in Silence of the Lambs. Oldman and Liotta are purely one-dimensional, and I would say the same about Giannini, but he is at least more intriguing than the other two. The long, often tedious film is stylishly directed by Ridley Scott, but feels like a complete abandonment of everything that made Silence of the Lambs so brilliant and intense.
Lecter in freedom is not quite as compelling as Lecter in captivity. He is little more than a devious predator, on the run, desperate, but apparently unafraid, not exactly one step ahead as he always seemed to be in the previous films. As much as I love the character of Hannibal Lecter, and wondered with great curiosity about what he did after his escape at the end of Silence of the Lambs, and also about his ultimate fate, I have to say I was wholly disappointed by this movie.
I have always thought there was a sublimely understated sexual tension between Hannibal and Clarice, he obviously adores her, admires her perhaps, and cannot bring himself to kill her, as that would rude or uncivilized on his part. He desires her. Maybe her feelings towards him are not exactly similar, but I certainly believe she is attracted to him in some perverse way, which revolts and upsets her, but helps to explain why she is never able to apprehend him, no matter how she tries, he always gets away at the last minute. Such a thing would require therapy, if it is indeed true.
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