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Trailer for "Hannibal Rising"

You can only get so much juice out of one lemon, and the one known as Hannibal Lecter has pretty much been squeezed dry. Eager for a way to get more money out of the world’s favorite cannibalistic serial killer, producer Dino De Laurentiis persuaded author Thomas Harris to devise another movie presenting his origins. It’s an interesting idea given the way the character has taken on a life of his own—he began as only a minor character in Harris’ 1981 novel Red Dragon, so working backward could serve to fill in Hannibal in a way that Harris had never given thought to before. Given Hannibal’s already established origins as an Eastern European born in between the wars, the possibilities are fascinating: Imagine him as the scion of deposed aristocrats, inbred royalty, or as a product of Fascist excesses—perhaps one of the children in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Sadean Salo? No such luck. In the well-trodden path of movie monsters turned into avenging angels for the box office, Hannibal Rising presents the young Lecter as a boy whose family is killed by renegade sub-Nazis in 1941. Eventually making his way to France and the care of his late uncle’s wife (Chinese star Gong Li, once again, as in Memoirs of a Geisha, cast as a Japanese), he studies medicine and sets out for revenge. A brief glimmer that the movie might be intended as a study in the corrupting effects of vengeance quickly disappears in the face of bad guys so evil that you feel no compunction in watching Hannibal slaughter them. The leader of these is played by an unrecognizable Rhys Ifans, better known as comical goofballs in films like Human Nature. Perhaps fighting against his natural tendencies he delivers an overwrought performance, though one that pales next to that of Gaspard Ulliel in the title role. He looks less like Anthony Hopkins than Crispin Glover, and overacts as much as the two of them combined. Filmed primarily in Lithuania and the Czech Republic, where great production values come cheap, it’s a handsome-looking film, all high contrast and desaturated colors. (The director is Peter Webber, and the links to his memorable Girl with a Pearl Earring are all visual). But its appeal is only to diehard horror buffs, who may be disappointed to find it less gruesome than the standard set in recent years by producer Michael Bey’s torture-soaked remakes of 1970s movies like The Hills Have Eyes and The Hitcher.