Alright you knew it was coming, didn’t you? I did Manhunter and Red Dragon so of course He Got Game seemed like the next logical step. But right after that I checked out Hannibal. And I’m gonna cut right to the chase on this one: It’s boring, clumsy and a piece of shit. Now to expand on that. For the first hour and fifteen minutes very little happens. The first thing we learn is that there’s this guy named Verger (Gary Oldman (The Professional)) who wants to get revenge on Hannibal because of something Verger did to himself. This part doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Verger invites Hannibal over to his mansion, willingly takes drugs given to him by the man and continues to carve his own face off and feed it to the dogs as suggested by Lecter. I don’t get why this guy is so angry at Hannibal since this was all done of his own will. What did Verger expect to happen? I get that this is supposed to make Hannibal look bad and sure, he eggs the guy on a bit but he didn’t actually do the face peeling himself. Clarice calls Verger one of Lecter’s victims but when Verger looks back on the event he says to Starling, “seemed like a good idea at the time”.
And speaking of Clarice Starling (now Julianne Moore (Boogie Nights)), the second thing we learn is that she has grown into a brassy dame over the years. She has a take-no-shit attitude and has to constantly prove herself (mostly because she’s looked down upon as a woman) to her colleagues. I think it was a mistake to take all the down-hominess out of her. She’s like a robot that only wants to follow rules and catch Lecter. They also throw in shit like her getting congratulated by the Guinness Book of World Records for being the woman FBI agent that’s killed the most people. Why does her character need to be like this? I pictured Foster’s Starling as someone who is content with her work at the FBI and after ten years only rarely encounters some asshole that thinks she’s some loose dumb broad. Moore’s Starling ends up hating the FBI and is constantly barraged by fucking jerks that think she’s incompetent and/or easy.
The third thing we learn is that Hannibal is living in Italy. Apparently he’s been in retirement for the last ten years and hasn’t murdered someone in a while. And it seems the only reason why he starts to kill again is because an Italian cop figures out who he is. And Hannibal doesn’t seem as scary as he did in The Silence of the Lambs or like he would in Red Dragon. I think it’s because when we see him walk around in a suit and a fedora attending operas and giving lectures in libraries the only side we see of him is the crusty elitist. This is the first time we see Hannibal out in the world free to do what he wants (except for that one very brief part in The Silence of the Lambs) and he doesn’t do jack shit. The killer part is tucked away and not shown until much later in the film. When he does start to murder again it had been so long that my interest was waning. I imagined Lecter chopping people up and eating them all day but when we see him do that too for the first time it comes off as comical. His whole persona worked better when he was locked away in a basement and the horrible crimes he committed were left to our imagination.
So that’s all that happens for more than half of the movie. Two new characters are introduced, we see that Clarice has changed and Hannibal is still on the loose living in Italy. This should’ve taken a half hour at the most to cover. There’s too much farting around with Verger trying to locate and nab Hannibal, Starling getting shat on and fired for doing her job and Lecter roaming around Italy. When the ball finally does start rolling it involves Hannibal riding a carousel, killer hogs (or razorbacks for you Australians out there) and that infamous ending. So there’s not much meat on these bones.
To be fair there are spoilers here but read the next paragraph
If you haven’t seen Hannibal or don’t know about the ending then I say keep reading. I know I remember hearing about this when this thing first came out. I had no interest in the picture until I heard about it so it might do the same for you.
The ending goes as follow: To simplify things I’ll just start with saying that Hannibal drugs Clarice and when she wakes up she’s in Krendler’s house. She stumbles into the dining room where Hannibal is cooking something with Krendler sitting there at the end of the table. Krendler looks like he’s drugged because he can barely speak and his eyes are halfway closed. Then Hannibal removes the top portion of his skull, peels back the protective membrane and slices off a piece of Krendler’s brain. He then cooks it and feeds it back to Krendler. This is all happening while Krendler is still barely conscious. Now, I love the absurdity of this scene and how serious everyone involved takes it. But when I mentioned before that when we finally see Lecter do his thang it comes off as comical, this is what I was talking about. The whole damn scene is just so silly. Ray Liotta is at first sitting there all fucked up talking about “cornpone country pussy” and then with his brain exposed makes fun of Clarice’s accent all while Hannibal is trying to have a serious conversation with her. Now I don’t want you to get me wrong ‘cause I’m glad that this scene exists in some movie, any movie. It sounds so crazy and like a good idea on paper but to actually see it implemented doesn’t have quite the effect that you would think. It looks so cartoony and for this boring film it feels like they tried to compensate in outrageousness this one scene to balance out the tameness of the rest of it.
Hopkins and Frankie Faison (the dude who played Barney in The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon and a different character in Manhunter) are the only two to return from the previous installment. When The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme, screenwriter Ted Tally and Jodie Foster read Thomas Harris’ third installment they were all on board but bailed after they realized that the story stunk and it couldn’t be rewritten into something useful. I guess that was sort of good forethought even though Hannibal went on to be a big hit. But I wonder how much of that was due to people gossiping about the brain eating scene.
| This is Ridley Scott's menacing Hannibal Lecter, scary isn't it? |
Man, Ridley Scott put out a real stinker with this one. Clarice changed into someone that’s much blander and fairly unlikeable, the new characters are pretty forgettable and the character of Hannibal isn’t advanced or investigated further. In fact they took a step back with him. There’s no flow to the movie and it’s really unbalanced. Also, the world that they placed these characters in feels tiny. With The Silence of the Lambs it felt like Lecter had such a voluminous background and Starling had a pretty tragic past that still haunted her. None of that comes through with this picture. I just don’t buy the romance that evolves between Clarice and Hannibal. I can understand that they respect each other but they kinda fall in love and Lecter is even willing to cut off his hand for her. I could never see him putting someone else before him. He’s a fucking insane serial killer and self preservation is key so he can keep on killing and feel like a god. According to the webbernet (if you can trust such a thing) the ending in the book is even more ludicrous having Clarice and Hannibal run off together to fucking Argentina. I want to say I’m glad they didn’t go with this but the movie sucks anyway so I’m not sure if it would have made much of a difference.
It’s too bad this is the sequel we got after waiting ten years. Fortunately we only had to wait until the year after to get something much better in every way and much more fitting: Red Dragon. And, ok ok I respect that this is a different take on these characters, putting them in new situations and settings. It’s always cool to see something new but this wasn’t new in an interesting way. It was goddamn boring and that’s just about the worst thing a movie can be. It can be campy, cheesy, overblown and formulaic but if it’s boring then that’s the death sentence. Bottom line: skip it. But if you want to see that brain eating scene check YouTube.
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