Hannibal (2001)
Grade: B+
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Giancarlo Giannini, Ray Liotta
Director: Ridley Scott
Rated R for strong violence/gore and some language.


Ridley Scott’s "Hannibal" is an elegant horror film, the kind of movie that very rarely comes around. The fact that it is a sequel to Michael Mann’s overrated "Manhunter" (1986) and Jonathon Demme’s superb "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) is entirely incidental; it has nothing in common with its predecessors. "Manhunter" is about Will Graham (William L. Peterson), a cop who enlists Hannibal Lekter (notice the distracting misspelling; he’s played by Brian Cox) to help him get into the psyche of a serial killer as he’s tracking down family-stalker Francis “The Tooth Fairy” Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan). Similarly, "Silence"’s plot revolves around FBI agent Clarice Starling (Oscar winner Jodie Foster) getting help from Lecter (Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins) to catch Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Those two films were loved and praised to no end ("Silence" deserved it; "Manhunter" didn’t), but "Hannibal" has been met with such hostility that you wouldn’t think the film has anything worth seeing in it. But it does. Oh, it does.

Perhaps the story behind the making of the film is even better known than anything else associated with it (outside the oft-mentioned gore, which I’ll get to later), and perhaps that is a reason for some viewers’ outward hatred for it. Such things as Foster and Demme passing on the film adaptation, as well as the book’s supposedly terrible ending made headlines, and all the other negative news regarding the third film featuring Hannibal Lecter damned it to be hated. No matter how hated it ended up being, I liked the film for what it was. What it was not was The Silence of the Lambs, and I think I enjoyed it more because that’s what I suspected would be the case.

As for a plot, "Hannibal" has a ton of plots floating around in its 2-hour+ existence. The main one (probably the plot viewers hoped would be front and center) is the reunion of Clarice (played here by Julianne Moore) and Hannibal (played again by Anthony Hopkins). After waiting for 10 years, fans understandably were excited to see the two together again (I know I was). But let’s give an outline of the setup first: Hannibal is now free, roaming somewhere around in Italy, consistently outsmarting the authorities as they try to re-capture him. Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) is working on finding him and turning him in to Mason Verger for a large reward. Verger (played by an unrecognizable and unbilled Gary Oldman, whose performance here is delicious) is a former child molester who was referred to Lecter long before he was ever captured, and while he was still a psychiatrist. Lecter instructed Verger (under the influence of some sort of drug) to cut off his face and feed it to his dogs. Verger is Lecter’s fourth and only surviving victim, and is now horribly disfigured; his face is wrinkled and stretched out, and one eye is stretched open without an eyelid. (Ever seen “In Living Color”? Think a really messed up Fire Marshall Bill.) He doesn’t blame himself for the incident (in the film’s single best line, he states—after the disorienting flashback scene that portrays the nightmarish occurrence—“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”), and now wants revenge. His plan: catch Lecter and feed him to man-eating boars. Fun, fun, fun. Meanwhile, Clarice has just suffered public disgrace after an unintentionally violent drug bust (she’s now in the Guinness Book of World Records for a reason I’d rather not spoil), and is trying to find Lecter along with the stereotypically slimy Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta, looking much fatter and older than he did as Henry Hill in "Goodfellas") [on a side note, the sexism in this film, unlike in "Silence," doesn’t work at all; I would be looking at Julianne Moore’s legs—as Krendler does—too, but that doesn’t mean I’m sexist, it just means I’m a guy]. When she finds out about Verger’s malicious plan, she decides to try and stop it. All of this ultimately leads up to one of the most haunting sick-joke climaxes ever filmed (another thing I’ll get to later). Do all the plotlines cause the film to suffer from convolution? No; in fact, I rather liked that the film had so many subplots, because it made it a little more interesting.

As a sequel, "Hannibal" isn’t a complete failure, but it can’t be called a success; the Clarice we are given is played by a different actress, to top all the differences off. But as an individual film, I think it’s great. The film is many things genre wise: artsy drama (some of the scenes with Hannibal in Florence belong in a period piece rather than a cannibal flick), dark comedy, horror, thriller, dark romance, and action. Many have criticized the film’s tendency to casually move from genre to genre, but I liked it. If the film were only about Verger’s plot to kill Lecter, we wouldn’t have the reuniting of Hannibal and Clarice, and if it were only about Lecter on the loose, we wouldn’t get the sensationally vivid thrill of the Pazzi/Hannibal cat and mouse game. In a deliriously clever and tense scene, a pickpocket is meant to get Hannibal’s fingerprint, but ends up getting stabbed. In a lesser film, the thrill would come from the clever way the pickpocket nonchalantly tries to approach Hannibal (in said lesser film, the pickpocket wouldn’t die—he’d get the fingerprint), but here, we also get the even more clever way that Hannibal picks up on him and then casually bumps into him and…well, you know. There are a couple scenes throughout the film that possess the tingly fear and/or excitement that this one does, and if we’re talking early on, then both that come to mind are flashback sequences. The first is the aforementioned scene involving Verger cutting his own face off (as I said, fun, fun, fun), but the superior one is a brief video of Hannibal’s past days in an institution, and gives us a great jump as…ah, I can’t ruin it. It’s just too pleasurable when it finally does come around.

When I first saw Mason Verger, his face kind of startled me, with its invention of…well, of scars and disfigurations. I thought that the mini-gimmick would carry throughout the film and distract me, especially since I was familiar with Gary Oldman. But his performance shines through the elaborate makeup and reveals a devilish source of dark comedy. It’s kind of hard to hold your own opposite Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, but Oldman does it perfectly---his performance is even Oscar-worthy compared to what else I have seen this year, but the film’s negative reception yielded no Oscars. He’s the best choice for Verger, without a doubt (although I’m a little upset the screenwriters wrote out his sister Margot). Likewise, Hopkins is brilliant (almost Oscar-worthy as well, but I digress) as he recreates a charming cannibal (an oxymoron? Not in the hands of Sir Anthony). While I’m critiquing the acting, a big question has been this: does Julianne Moore live up to Jodie Foster’s excellent, Oscar-winning performance? The answer is ultimately ‘no’, but not the disgustedly negative ‘no’ one might expect. Moore gives a good performance—better than expected—but it is not even close to what Foster gave. Still, I can’t picture Foster in the role; this is a totally different Clarice.

The technical side of the film is amazing. Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner," "Alien," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down"—all good to great films) directs it with the flair of a film less interested in action and more interested in scenery, and it pays off in the end by giving the beautiful backgrounds a sharp and eerie contrast to, say, sautéed brain. The cinematography while Hannibal is in Italy is stunningly gorgeous. Near the beginning of the film, and even towards the end, there are some ingenious camera angles that really set off an effect. Nice things around the edges like the ones I mentioned above are what make "Hannibal" a good film; good one-liners and some (let’s be accurate and make that ‘a lot of’) suspense alone doesn’t automatically earn it a thumbs-up.

One thing I need to address (I need to address it only because "Hannibal" can not be discussed without it being addressed) is the amount of gore. "Hannibal" has been knocked many times because of the amount of blood and guts that show up, and its ‘R’ rating; this means that a six year old can see a man cut his own face off in "Hannibal" if his parents decide to take him to see it. I don’t think the controversy is relevant—I think a parent should be able to decide for themselves what their child sees. Of course, who’s to say that images in "Hannibal" couldn’t severely mess a 16-year-old up, while his 12-year-old brother wouldn’t be bothered at all? The climax of "Hannibal" has the Ray Liotta character drugged at Hannibal’s house, and Hannibal has cut his head open to reveal part of his brain. The Liotta character is so drugged up he has no idea what is going on, and Hannibal cuts a few pieces of his brain off, and starts cooking it (“Something smells good…” quips the out-of-it Krendler). He then feeds it to the Liotta character (and in the very last scene, feeds it to a child who doesn’t know what it is). While this was happening, the Liotta character was, in actuality, portrayed by a $70,000 puppet; as my friends and I watched it, we thought it was really Ray Liotta with a computer generated…brain. That’s how disturbing and realistic it is. I will cease to go on, because the MPAA is another topic for another day, and the gore in the film is not a factor of its appeal or lack thereof to me.

The ending (which I just swiped by going into great detail about Ray Liotta’s fate) is stomach turning in a good way, the kind of climax that nearly compensates for any doubt that littered your mind through the film until then. It’s not that there’s a gigantic twist or anything, but the way things unfold, in a gleefully nightmarish, feel-good-in-a-cannibalistic-kind-of-way, you can’t help but shiver at delight at what Scott’s just presented us with. As Hannibal and a helplessly mortified Clarice sit down for dinner with—and for—a nearly departed Ray Liotta, there’s a kind of tragic horror that fills the atmosphere, and it works perfectly. As everything leads up to Hannibal’s escape (by chopping off his own hand, no less), I couldn’t help but be pleased (in a strictly this-isn’t-pleasing manner, of course; God forbid anything associated with "Hannibal" be politically incorrect).

How could you not like "Hannibal," its loyal and perplex fans ask. I can perfectly well see why one would not like "Hannibal" (and for reasons that are not my own irrelevant quibbles). But for me it was one of the best inconsequential horror films in a while, and, thanks to Scott’s direction and a witty, clever, and creepy script by David Mamet and Steve Zaillian, not the same kind of merely decent inconsequential horror film that comes out every other month. Is it "The Silence of the Lambs II?" NO. But "Hannibal" never aspires to be the deep character study that "Silence" was and achieves its accomplishments on an entirely different level. As soon as people realize this, "Hannibal" just could become a mini-masterpiece. Which, of course, means that "Hannibal" has absolutely no chance of becoming a mini-masterpiece. I’m not gonna argue that it’s a great film. But it sure is a good one.


-Alex, July 2002