Hannibal

I was discussing The Silence of the Lambs with someone who knows a lot more about film than I do, and he made an excellent point--Silence worked so well because it was a small film, and Jonathan Demme treated it as such. It was small in the sense of it being taught and compact, and it was small in the sense of it relying mostly on basic human fear (the killer-behind-the-glass) rather than on gore and fancy visuals. It horrified more by what it implied, and it made it's most famous character so hideous simply by clever exposition and some of the finest two-character exchanges seen on film.

Hannibal isn't as clever as it ought to be or might have been, and it tries desperately to resurrect the twistedly brilliant interchanges between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins from the first film (it does this in two ways, one obvious [having Starling listen to tapes of the exchanges] and one a bit more subtle [having Starling interrogate another 'monster']).

This sort of homage is expected, but it pales in comparison to the original and it threatens to damage the legacy of the backstory. Where Hannibal goes right is where it deviates from the formula of the previous two films, as in the noirish middle movement of the film, which takes places against the backdrop of Dante Alighieri's Florence. Where it goes wrong, and it mostly does go wrong, is in its attempt to expand the relationship between Starling and Lechter to the point of unintelligibility and compromised logic. The cat-and-mouse game of Silence is replaced with the Freudian/Oedipal psychological stalking of Hannibal, and the whole thing becomes very, very messy.

Anthony Hopkins is once again brilliantly menacing as Lechter, flavoring the role with just enough humor, intelligence and sadism. He's aged, as has Lechter, and the character's weariness/impatience is showing--Hopkins does a great job of conveying this. Julianne Moore is a terrific actress given the thankless job of following Jodie Foster. It's a miscalculation, but no fault of Moore's. Starling is much too amorphous here, given nothing interesting to say or do, and Moore can't pull of the quick quips as effectively as Foster. She's added maturity to the role, but she's diminished it as well by making Starling far more one-dimensional. Again, most of this is the fault of the story. Gary Oldman is terrific in his uncredited role as Mason Verger, the character that takes the position in the story that Lechter occupied in the previous film.

Giancarlo Giannini, however, steals the movie, and represents more than anything the lost potential of this sequel. In my humble opinion, Hannibal would have been far more interesting had the story been built completely around Pazzi's (Giannini's character) pursuit of Lechter in Italy, leaving the Starling-Buffalo Bill storyline far behind. That would have made this sequel a truly separate, unique chapter in Thomas Harris' chronicles of Dr Lechter, in the way that Silence was completely different from Manhunter/Red Dragon. The Florentine setting is terrific; Giannini is perfectly rumpled, harried and corrupt; the allegory is rich and the atmosphere is reminiscient of a great, hard-boiled thriller--everything the rest of Hannibal is not.

But this isn't enough to save the film, which is otherwise uninspired. Ray Liotta is campy and laughable as a Justice Department bigwig with a jones for squashing Starling's career (it's a bit more complicated than that, but that would give away a major plotline), and the other bit players are uninspired. The final sequence, of which much has been written, is, well, unwatchable, not particulalry for its shock-value but more for its laughability and ridiculous humor (yes, humor). A major miscalculation among a host of others...

I have nothing to recommend about Hannibal, and give it my lowest rating. I am more disappointed by the missed opportunity it represents, however, than how truly bad it is. Ridley Scott does what he can with a weak script (David Mamet's work, re-worked by someone else) based on a novel that I haven't read, but believe is a misstep in Harris' tales of Doctor Lechter. I recommend renting last year's The Cell instead, which is also not a great film, but at least offers a more inspired overall experience.

To be avoided...