"Hannibal Rising" does what the film versions of "Red Dragon" and "Hannibal" could not before it. It turns Hannibal Lector into a joke, and makes "The Silence of the Lambs" -- one of the greatest suspense-horror films ever made, and a high point in feminism on screen -- into a launching pad for a most mediocre collection of films. (Harris fucked Lector in the books, too, a retreat from his well-deserved "Silence" fame.)
Lector, the greatest modern book and film villain, has gone a long way down since the psychiatrist terrified Jodie Foster and America in 1991. Anthony Hopkins isn't even in this prequel installment, having mumbled his way through the pointless Lector prequel, "Red Dragon" (a remake of the far superior, Michael Mann-directed "Manhunter" that preceded "Silence" by several years and starred Brian Cox as Lector.)
In "Rising," novelist Thomas Harris and director Peter Webber (who the fuck is he?) take Lector back to his childhood and launch this demonic monster as a sad-eyed sympathetic orphan. Then they turn him into a vengeful Jason Bourne, minus the chiseled chin. Batboy, if you will. The gist: Poor Hannibalbaby, orphaned by war, sees his kid sister eaten by cannibalistic WWII soldiers. The boy is forced to eat portions of baby sis. Sick, yes, and wholly unnecessary. That the plot revolves around Lector growing up to enact revenge on these monstrous men destroys any suspense; anyone might do the same. Me, you, Mister Rogers. Kill 'em all. His targets are easy villains. If one of his victims were a sympathetic born-again Christian, peaceful Islamic convert, or otherwise reformed man, it might have created a whisper of suspense. But there's nothing. Not a drip of suspense.
As young Lector, Gaspard Ulliel is so utterly not terrifying, he's forced to hold a flashlight under his face to make creepy boo faces. Like a campfire, back in the Cub Scout or church camp days. Please. Lector is supposed to be the ultimate boogieman of our nightmares, the human monster who wants to pick you apart piece by piece intellectually before he does the same physically. We should fear him; this film asks us to cheer for him. My pick for the worst of 2007. An utter disaster and franchise killer. Harris is Judas. To his own dark imagination. Blame the book, avoid the movie. D-
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