Hannibal

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.

The only other thing that I need to mention is that another new character is brought in, Krendler played by Ray Liotta (Wild Hogs).  He’s some government guy that has a high up position and is one of Clarice’s bosses or something, it wasn’t too clear.  Anyway, they really bash you over the head that this guy is a womanizer, anti-gay and kind of evil.  So a real prick.  The only reason he’s in the movie is because they needed someone the audience would hate and would want to see butchered for the ending but I’ll get to that in a minute.

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.  

He Got Game

Jake Shuttlesworth (Denzel Washington (Virtuosity)) is in jail but has a deal proposed to him where if he convinces his son Jesus (Ray Allen (NBA shit)), the number one high school basketball player in the country, to attend and play for Big State then he’ll get his sentence reduced significantly.  Sounds like a great concept to me.

But what makes this one worth watching are all of the superfluous strange things.  For starters it has an Aaron Copland and Public Enemy soundtrack.  I don’t think anyone has set basketball playing (in Brooklyn no less) to Copland’s “Hoedown” before.  I don’t think it really works very well but goddamn is it an original idea and I respect that.  There’s also a pimp and his prostitute (Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Resident Evils)) making references to Gone with the Wind and Vertigo.  Not to say that all pimps and prostitutes aren’t cultured people that wouldn’t or shouldn’t know those movies but it just seemed so weird and out of place because this is a serious flick and those references are meant to be taken as such.  We also have a scene where Denzel mentions to his nephew that he must have grown a couple of inches since he last saw him.  The nephew can’t believe his ears and looks happier than a kid on Christmas morning.  I don’t understand this overblown reaction.  Denzel’s kids are named Jesus and Mary and there are headlines in the papers like “Jesus Saves” after he wins a game.  And there’s plenty more.

Everyone’s acting is pretty bad in this except Denzel.  He’s fucking great as a father who pushes his son to the edge and then over it.  Prison makes him a better man like Nicholas Cage in Con Air.  He seems to be the only person in the movie that can see straight and is the least corrupted by his son’s success.

He Got Game makes being a young blue chip player look like hell.  There are all these people that want a piece of you and it’s difficult to not get sucked into your own fame and ego.  It’s an interesting issue and it’s something that not very many films talk about.  I want to say that this portrayal is over the top (don’t know a helluva lot about the topic) but in this case it helps to get the point across.

But I don’t think I should go on and on about this Spike Lee joint.  It’s best if you just see it for yourself.

Manhunter and Red Dragon

I watched The Silence of the Lambs last week and it was one of those things where I saw it was on TV and only meant to watch a couple minutes of it but wound up watching the whole thing.  It’s so weird when that happens because it’s something you can’t brace yourself for or even process.  You go into it with the mindset that you’re only going to see this movie for a little bit so you’re not really paying close attention at first but before you know it you’re sucked in.  It’s a totally different and uncommon way to experience a film.  This type of “whim movie watching” happens, at least for me, maybe only once a year.  And I’m talking about seeing the entire thing, not just half or most but from credits to credits.  It’s like you’re in a daze the whole time, like you’re hypnotized by the picture.  It never enters into your head to change the channel or that you should be doing something else.  That’s like the power of cinema or something man.      

Anyway, since I really enjoyed checking out The Silence of the Lambs again after a bunch of years I decided to do a little comparison between Manhunter and Red Dragon.  I’ve already seen both of these but not since 2002 so I needed a refresher.  Just so no one’s in the dark here Red Dragon is a remake of Manhunter which is based off of the book Red Dragon written by Thomas Harris who also wrote the sequel The Silence of the Lambs but the movie Red Dragon came out after the film The Silence of the Lambs making it a prequel as well.  Simple, right?  Manhunter was a flop when it came out but because of the huge success of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal De Laurentiis gave it another shot and put out Red Dragon.

I do want to mention that I still think The Silence of the Lambs is a kick ass movie.  There’s great atmosphere, great acting all around and great pacing.  I love how there’s two stories happening at once (the relationship between Hannibal and Clarice and the Buffalo Bill killings) but they’re both intertwined so you can’t have one without the other.  It works well that they share equal billing instead one being a subplot of the other.  And Hannibal Lecter really is kind of a creepy dude.  It’s great how they build him up and already make you think that he’s a soulless monster before revealing him.  When Jodie Foster goes to visit him the first time and she has to go through like a hundred cell doors, guards and travel all the way down into the bowels of the institution just builds onto the anxiety.  And then when we finally do see him standing up straight with arms at his sides in the middle of his cell behind plexiglass is pretty damn eerie.  He’s like an artifact that’s been tucked away hoping to be forgotten about but the thing is that no can afford to forget about him or they’ll end up with their face chewed off. 

Now that that’s out of the way let’s move on to Red Dragon.  I’m starting with this one because I think it’ll lay the groundwork for a better comparison to Manhunter.  Also, just to be clear I haven’t read the book so I have no idea which picture is more faithful.  I’m mostly looking at how these two compare to each other. 

Ok, so everything in this movie takes place before The Silence of the Lambs in the mid 80’s.  In the prologue we learn how Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins (Thor)) was nabbed by an FBI agent named Will Graham (Ed Norton (The Italian Job)).  After the credits we flash forward to Graham on a Floridian beach with his family.  His old boss, Jack Crawford played by Harvey Keitel (Cop Land), comes to visit to try and convince Graham to take on the latest serial killer case.  After the usual “I’m retired” speech and the “but no one can catch serial killers like you” rebuttal of course Graham takes the case on.  He visits Hannibal several times to help him out and eventually (spoiler) figures out who the killer is. 

Like with Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs we get to know our killer Francis Dolarhyde a.k.a “the tooth fairy”, played by Ralph Fiennes (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2).  And I really dig it when a movie decides to do that because usually a maniac is much more interesting than a cop and this is no exception.  I mean I don’t have anything against Ed Norton or his character but the killer is who I want to follow around and see what motivates him.  In this case Dolarhyde thinks he’s transforming into something.  I’m not sure if it’s a red dragon or if he worships the red dragon and he’s changing into something else.  That wasn’t very clear but really I don’t think it matters.  The point is that this guy isn’t murdering people for pleasure.  In fact he’s tortured and thinks this red dragon has a hold over him.

The biggest problem with this character though is that I just don’t find him menacing enough.  We only see him kill one person on screen.  All the rest are done off screen.  To be fair the same thing happens with Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs but the difference is that Hannibal is locked up and Dolarhyde is out on the streets.  Seeing Dolarhyde go about his life and even strike up a romance with Emily Watson (Punch-Drunk Love) doesn’t make him feel very threatening.  Not that I would want to have lunch with the guy but when he brings his new blind girlfriend to pet a sedated tiger on a surgical table at a zoo he kinda lost his edge for me.  That was just a very sweet thing to do.  I like Ralph Fiennes too (at least I think I do) but I thought he was scarier in Schindler’s List.  What’s strange is that in The Silence of the Lambs we don’t see Buffalo Bill kill a single person on screen and yet he seemed more frightening.  And I think it’s because of the relationship Dolarhyde takes on with Emily Watson.  We actually see our killer be nice and kind which undercuts his threat.  We never see Buffalo Bill do anything nice.  That guy’s fucked up through and through.

But what about Hannibal?  He does a nice thing by helping Graham out with his case just like he helped Jodie Foster so why does he come off so nasty?  Well in Red Dragon he definitely doesn’t seem as mean.  I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it but in The Silence of the Lambs there was an aura about him that made you believe that this is not someone to fuck with.  In Red Dragon he feels more like an old friend and like you know he’s gonna help Graham out even though he gives him the runaround.  It might be because we know that he assisted Jodie Foster before (or since this is a prequel: will assist).  It also might be because there isn’t as much dialogue about eating people and tickling breasts ‘n shit this time.

As far as Ed Norton, Harvey Keitel and Philip Seymour Hoffman go, they all do a real solid job.  Hoffman is especially good in the scene where he gets captured by Dolarhyde.  Keitel and Norton both play it straight here without venturing too far into interesting territory.

The film as a whole is just ok.  Not bad and not great.  Most of the bad stuff can be overlooked but there isn’t a tremendous amount of other things to get excited over either (the Danny Elfman score is one of those things though).  I think it’s worth seeing because it expands the world and characters given to us in The Silence of the Lambs.  Probably the most interesting thing about this movie is we learn how Hannibal was caught.  The rest of the picture doesn’t really have a lot to do with that but that’s ok I guess since it’s supposed to be a separate story.

When I saw that Brett Ratner directed this I was surprised because this isn’t the type of material that I associate him with.  When I think Brett Ratner the first thing that comes to mind is Rush Hour.  The two are synonymous.  When I went to go make sure that he made three Rush Hours I also realized that I’ve seen most of his features.  I really doubt I’m ever going to get to The Family Man even though I’m interested in just about anything Nicholas Cage does.  And two Rush Hours was enough for me so that third one is also probably not going to be seen.  But Red Dragon is his best movie in my opinion.  There aren’t a whole bunch of things he could’ve done better because when it comes down to it this story is a not as good version of The Silence of the Lambs.  But it gives me confidence (albeit a very small amount) that Brett Ratner could make something real good one day.     

Manhunter, though, is pretty different overall.  First of all it’s way more 80’s than Red Dragon.  Actually, if the filmmakers didn’t tell me that Red Dragon took place in the 80’s then I might not have noticed it.  In Manhunter they don’t have to tell you because the movie was made during the right time period.

Graham is played by William Petersen (To Live and Die in L.A., Fear), Crawford is played by Dennis Farina (Striking Distance, Midnight Run) and Hannibal is played by Brian Cox (The Ring, X2).  Petersen is more intense, tougher and scruffier than Norton’s version.  I like this cigarette smoking, bearded edition better.  He’s seems way more tortured and determined to catch the killer.  Like he’ll start yelling at the killer, who’s not really there, when he thinks he’s on to something.  I would say Farina is slightly better than Keitel because he was a real cop before he became an actor so it makes his role feel a little more authentic. 

But Brian Cox as Hannibal seems totally off.  Because most (if not all) of us know the Hopkins version of Hannibal it’s hard to see anyone else in that role and that certainly plays into me saying that Brian Cox feels wrong.  He’s not scary, threatening or intense.  Instead Cox plays it very relaxed being sleepy eyed when Graham first visits him and lying on his back with his feet up when Graham calls him up later in the film.  The filmmakers also decided to make him English (and sometimes Scottish when Cox’s accent slips) which definitely makes him hard to accept as a true Hannibal (yeah I know Hopkins is Welsh but Hannibal isn’t).  The way we’re presented to him is completely different also.  Hannibal is kept in an all white cell with regular bars, wearing all white clothes on the top floor of an institution.  This is very different from the dark and grimy cellar that they keep him in, in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.  Cox’s Hannibal seems like kind of a nice guy actually (except for him telling Dolarhyde to kill Graham and his family) and like he’s happy to help solve the case.  Oh, and it’s strange that Lecter is spelled differently in this one: Lecktor.

Tom Noonan (Last Action Hero, Robocop 2) plays Dolarhyde and he works better than Ralph Fiennes for two reasons: he looks way creepier and we actually see him kill a bunch of people.  Noonan also takes his girlfriend to pet a sedated tiger but the romance is briefer and he just doesn’t seem as nice.

Spoilers from here on

The two biggest differences between these two films are the beginning and the ending.  In Manhunter they skip how they caught Hannibal and just start with Crawford trying to convince Graham to take the case.  And it all ends with a really cool shootout instead of a one on one confrontation like in Red Dragon.  A mano-a-mano fight is exactly what I look for in an ending but this one didn’t work for me.  Having Dolarhyde cop out and fake his death doesn’t fit with his character.  He’s supposed to be crazy and willing to die for his god.  Having this ending just makes him seem like an asshole.  I’m not gonna take him seriously if he can’t follow through on his craziness.  Also it’s really lame that Norton knows exactly how to rattle the killer’s cage and get his son, who’s being held hostage, away from him.  Things just get too convenient for me.  Having Noonan’s Dolarhyde blow away cops with a shotgun and make a stand to the death made him a good deal more threatening.  You have the feeling that this guy could fly off the handle at any moment and do some damage.  You knew he wouldn’t wimp out by faking his own death so he could get revenge later by taking a little boy hostage.  I would’ve had more respect for this character if he went after Graham directly like a man.     

Manhunter was directed by Michael Mann and was his third feature.  You can already see some of his trademarks like this being a movie about cops, trying to portray the investigation realistically, casting real cops, lots of blue lighting and using Chicago as a setting.  I think this is one of his better films but like Red Dragon it’s not great.

Some other things to mention about both films are that Manhunter felt at least fifteen minutes shorter even though both have about the same running time.  Red Dragon is a more even film and this is due mostly to spreading the Dolarhyde romance segments throughout instead of bunching it all in towards the end like Manhunter.  Manhunter is shot a little better but I like how both films look.  Red Dragon goes for dark and dirty while Manhunter is cleaner and 80’s to the max.  Red Dragon fits in much better with The Silence of the Lambs not only because of Anthony Hopkins but also in terms of look and feel.  Red Dragon also has the better title.  Both talk about Graham’s ability to track down killers like it’s a sixth sense.  Some of the lines are exactly the same in both films but three quarters of them are slightly different.   And both have good soundtracks.

After all of that discussion I think they even out.  With Manhunter most of the scenes and dialogue felt rushed compared to Red Dragon and the characters seemed a little flatter but a bunch tougher.  Red Dragon may be more in line with The Silence of the Lambs but it seemed to drag at times.  It’s hard to recommend which is the one to see if you’re only going to do one.  Well if it sways you, Manhunter is weirder.  I mean they play an 80’s power ballad while we watch Dolarhyde get jealous of some guy walking his new girlfriend home and then he kills him.  And “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” blasts during the final showdown.  If that’s the kinda shit you can get behind then Manhunter is for you.  If not, go with the other one.