Property Search
Cars Online
Buy DVDs online
Local sleepovers
Book flights online!
Work money smarter
Wine of the Week
Life Insurance Quote
Online Dating
Save on your insurance
Houses for sale
Go shopping!
Convert anything 
Henrie's Recipes
| Page: 2 of 2 - back |
Next a very slow pan shot around the room shows the weapons, monitors, orderlies and many other trappings of the security detail keeping tabs on Lecter. Then we are borne, with Clarice, into a gauntlet beset with psychopaths. They are filthy, unruly, noisy and terrifyingly out of their minds — especially “Multiple” Miggs (whom Lecter subsequently — literally — talks to death for his rudeness toward Clarice). Finally, Agent Starling reaches that final cell, where the worst of the worst lurks… and there he stands in his boiler suit: neat, dapper, perfectly controlled and impeccably courteous. It is a delightful paradox of expectation and delivery, an anticlimax that is comically ingenious but flesh-creepingly eerie.
Overcooked sequel
Ten years later, despite having denounced his involvement in the earlier film, Hopkins reprised the role in ‘Hannibal’, its sequel. This time, however, he was joined by Julianne Moore in the role of the FBI agent. Although a perfectly competent actress, Moore brought none of Foster’s ambiguity to the role. True, Clarice Starling is now ten years older and jaded many years beyond that number, but one feels that Lecter’s affection for her may not have outlasted her innocence and fragility, which Foster has not lost with the years. Moore is simply too wiry and overtly tough to play Clarice.
Ridley (‘Bladerunner’) Scott had replaced Demme at the helm, and so gone was the atmosphere of ‘Silence’. Instead the film frequently feels more like an action film than the noir thriller it ought to be — strange, since Scott is considered one of the finest modern directors of noir film.
The plot also leaves a lot to be desired. Certain behaviours are not in character. One can accept, for example, that Lecter’s twisted sense of chivalry may well lead him to feed Clarice’s rival his own brains, but that he would dress her in such a tacky frock for the dinner is unthinkable. Foster’s Clarice tells Ardelia in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ that “Lecter wouldn’t come after me. It’s hard to explain, but I think he’d consider it rude.” The Lecter of the earlier film would have dressed his nemesis-paramour far more classily. Instead, Clarice sits there next-to-naked as he flambés Ray Liotta’s grey matter.
Lecter’s final act of gentility is to cut off his own hand at the wrist rather than sever Starling’s hair. It’s a little cheesy, to be honest. Again, the Lecter who played cryptic word-games with her in ‘Silence’, who told her to read Marcus Aurelius, would have thought such a move unacceptably infra dig.
More than anything, though, ‘Hannibal’ is a glut of unnecessary violence and gore.
More disappointment
Next came ‘Red Dragon’, a disappointing prequel based on the same novel as ‘Manhunter’. With an opening scene specially written by Thomas Harris (the book begins after Will Graham’s initial retirement), the film had a stellar cast and a great deal of potential, but the limp, lukewarm direction of Brett Ratner put paid to any hope of its being anything like as good as ‘Silence of the Lambs’. With Ratner's minimal CV prior to ‘Red Dragon’ — having directed the first two ‘Rush Hour’s and ‘The Family Man’, plus a couple of Madonna videos — it's perhaps not surprising that the film is a complete and shameful waste of Hopkins, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ralph Fiennes.
Last of all we come to ‘Hannibal Rising’. With no Anthony Hopkins, it’s already on uneasy footing, and the film is actually quite dreadfully boring. Gaspard Ulliel gives a valiant effort as the young Hannibal, but he’s so absurdly pretty it’s difficult to find him scary. Keep an eye out for him, though — he’s a young actor (and aspiring director) who, if there is any justice in this world, should be going places very soon. Li Gong (‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’), in contrast, is mind-bendingly monotonous as the Lady Murasaki. The evolution of their relationship from surrogate mother and son to lovers (as well as the Oedipal conflict so vital to Hannibal’s story) is lost — she looks so young the disparity between their ages is under-emphasised.
Visually it’s a very attractive film — and so it should be, given that its director, Peter Webber, brought Vermeer to the screen in ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ — but beyond that there’s little to recommend it.
It may about the birth of a serial killer, but it bears little resemblance to the Hannibal Lecter we all know, love, and (like those film students) fear.
| Page: 2 of 2 - back |
