Hannibal Rising movie review

For the sake of this review, let's set aside the implicit mystery that drove Hannibal Lecter as a character, the implied absence of motive or reasoning behind his serial killer ways, the inscrutability of the sophisticated doctor with the cannibalistic leanings. Lecter, who through the course of three films beginning with 1991's The Silence of the Lambs (plus the not as well remembered side trip in 1986 Manhunter) has become one of the greatest screen villains of all time, has thrived on his impenetrability, his superiority, his evil-for-evil's-sake actions. Yes, we need to put that all aside when discussing Hannibal Rising because the new film by its very nature must work against the previous ambiguity of Hannibal's motives.

Hannibal Rising is a prequel, an origin story for the legendary murderer. That's a tough trick to pull off -- just ask Darth Vader. Fans of the Star Wars films know now that Vader was a much more interesting character after he had fallen to the Dark Side as opposed to before he switched sides. Can it be any different for Lecter now that all of his secrets are to be revealed to audiences?

It turns out that Lecter is a poor little rich boy. When we first meet him, he's an eight-year-old scion of affluence, living in Lithuania with his parents and his younger sister Mischa. World War II is underway, and it has spilled into young Hannibal's world when a battle between the Germans and the Russians accidentally results in the death of the boy's parents. Alone, and seeking shelter in a farmhouse from the harsh winter, Hannibal and Mischa soon find themselves the captives of a group of vicious looters who are also looking for shelter -- not just from the elements, but from the authorities too. As the winter drags on and starvation sneaks up on the group, it soon becomes clear that cannibalism may be the only option in order for the villains to stay alive.

The latter part of this intro, as conveyed by director Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and scripter/Hannibal novelist Thomas Harris, is told in snippets of flashback, as the older, traumatized Lecter (French actor Gaspard Ulliel) attempts to piece together what really happened years earlier. Now a young man in his teens and living under the tyranny of Soviet occupation, Hannibal is stuck in an inhospitable orphanage -- formerly the castle of the Lecter family, no less. Apparently rendered mute as a result of the tragic loss of his family, the boy nonetheless displays a steely willpower and cunning smarts. His escape from the orphanage is inevitable, and satisfyingly (for the audience) painful to one of his overseers at the place.

Therein lays one of the more fascinating aspects of Hannibal Rising. The character has always been portrayed as a coldhearted killer, and yet we as a collective audience have nonetheless always had a soft spot for him in our hearts. That's now taken even further: We don't just admire Hannibal from afar for his undeniable (if dastardly) talents; we're actually conditioned to root for him as he travels on the road to inevitable serial killer.

That road takes him to France, where he is looking for an uncle who he only knows from photographs. Upon arrival, Lecter finds that the uncle has since died, but that his widow is more than willing to take the young man in. She is Lady Murasaki Shikibu (portrayed by the striking Gong Li), a Japanese immigrant who had escaped from a similarly traumatic background. She sees something of herself in Hannibal, and the two form a bond. Through Lady Murasaki, Lecter returns to the world of culture and high society, while also pursuing a medical degree. And yet, the memory of his lost sister continues to haunt Hannibal, and when he discovers his taste for blood after a run-in with a local bully, the madman-to-be heads out on a journey of revenge against the men who had held him hostage all those years earlier.

Hannibal Rising was never going to compare to The Silence of the Lambs, or even the sequels that followed and gave Anthony Hopkins' take on Lecter more room to shine. It is a film that must be taken at face value: a tale of vengeance, an origin story, and ultimately a cash-grab on the part of those who own the character. And that's O.K. -- anyone who thinks that the many other sequels and prequels and reboots out there aren't done first and foremost for money needs to have their head examined (preferably not by Dr. Lecter).

Taken on its own merits, Hannibal Rising does work fairly well as a thriller where the audience is in the odd position of cheering on the bad guy. Never for a moment does the viewer care about the men who Hannibal hunts down, so transparently evil are they. Boringly evil, in fact, with none of the nuance or character that makes for a great villain -- like Hopkin's Hannibal, for example. So as Ulliel's Lecter marches sadly, inevitably to his fate, we can applaud the actor's performance (a tough job taking over this character from Hopkins) and we can root for the character as he bites off cheeks and the such. But we can't do much more than that, because try as we might to set aside Silence of the Lambs and the rest, there's no getting around the fact that we've already filled ourselves with that main course. And Hannibal Rising isn't much more than appetizer.