Hannibal Rising (2007)
Funny how every movie I take even a passing interest in turns out to be a big Baby Ruth bar without all the yummy. Here’s some backstory: The Truth According to Wiki has it that director Dino de Laurentiis said he was gonna make a movie about Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s origins with or without author Thomas Harris, so Harris preemptively wrote the book and screenplay. I can’t comment on the former, but a horribly rushed pace certainly shows in the latter–this is a movie that started with good exposition and just couldn’t convert any of it into payoff. But don’t just take my word for it when some random dude’s already posted on IMDB!
SPOILER: Turns out he shouldn't have.
“[young Lecter is] Still searching for his sister’s murderers, still bitter and still ever hopeful of satisfying his desire for retribution. This chance arrives, and soon we are to learn that for a pound of flesh lost a pound of flesh must be repaid. This is the horrific tale of justice and honor, a young man’s growing pains that will have the guilty paying with more than just flesh and bone. This is the up and rising tale of the young Hannibal, prey you do not meet him, for meat you shall be to him. Taste his wroth.” Written by Cinema_Fan
That is exactly who this movie wants to appeal to.
Premise: 2/5
Funk Rising (am I right or am I right?)
While attempting escape from their Nazi occupiers , Young Hanny and his sister Misha lose their aristocratic family to a random skirmish in 1944 Lithuania. Subsequently and even more traumatically, Hannibal then loses his baby sister Misha as she is killed and eaten by a group of five starving Nazi looters. They eventually flee and his collapsed body is picked up by the Russian Army. Eight years later finds Hannibal in a state orphanage based in his old castle, but daily beatings and bad borscht don’t appeal, so he trips the Russian border and seeks out his rich old uncle. Turns out he died 3 years back, so Hanny’s left in the charge of his incredibly hot Japanese Aunt Murasaki. She takes him in and tutors him in the ways of the samurai for some dumbass reason, even though he’s obviously already such a Shaky McRazor. The young prodigy uses all this love and attention as a springboard to reassert himself and track down his old tormentors, who conveniently are all alive and still get together weekly for some serious Guitar Hero. I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep pretending this was epic.
IMO this is the only truly scary moment all movie, achieved with a simple sketch but playing true to the old Hannibal we know and love. Here his first victim gets a horrifying look at what's to come.
A big prob with the flick’s action and pacing is that the Nazis start coming after Lecter right after he kills the first of them, which confuses our main theme of revenge. From that point on, we don’t delight in Hannibal’s righteous viciousness so much as we continually fear for the life of this supposedly brilliant (though we see little evidence of it) and badass kid. Also, a few of the ex-looters are too crudely portrayed as outrageously wicked dudes, and they really out-Herod Herod.
We also don’t really learn anything about the transition Hannibal made from vigilante justice to random carnage, like when he ate the nurse’s face in Silence. He doesn’t even go to America at the end, as he supposedly does in the novel. Most disappointingly, the rushed pace throughout typifies this as just another movie eager to get to key scenes rather than to tell a story or portray a character’s changing moods.
Seriously, Hanny (unlike the smooth supergenius portrayed by Hopkins), fucks up all movie. It’s pretty pathetic, but at least he’s still good at his old skill of turning the tables on his attackers, as seen often in the prior movie, Hannibal.
Cast: 4/5
This is why hamburgers should be high, and I don't care if you don't get that.
Gaspard Ulliel, the French kid they’ve got playing Hannibal, is trying way too hard here, and looks/sounds plain weird to boot. He’s kinda hyper and affected, totally unlike the laconic Lecter of the first films, and his accent is just too thick. Rather than a total sociopath, he comes off like a dorky exchange student right off the bus…you’d feel pretty safe giving him his first atomic wedgie.
However, everyone else is extremely believable! The deadpan Inspector interrogating Lecter was pretty damn good, but that whole thread doesn’t go anywhere. He’s just there to put some heat on, but it’s a low simmer. Li Gong steals most of Hannibal’s scenes with her graceful beauty and interesting background. The bad guys are thunderously so, as noted earlier. I think their every other line threatens buttsex or murder–how can even Lecter hurdle that? Okay, by chewing their faces off, but it’s kinda moot by that point.
Handicapping these talents is the awkwardly shitty dialogue everyone’s forced to share, and the strongly contrived nature of the movie helps deflate it as well…the needless Japanophilia (Hanny the Sammy?!) especially.
Cinematography & FX: 3/5
Having dutifully avenged the murder of his sister, our hero walks off into the setting sun and OH GOD NO.
There’s some good scenery here but it passes too quickly….there aren’t really enough establishing scenes, just images that fly by, just like everything else in the movie.
You know that HR should have been all about the violence, but sadly, Hanny’s kills are neither spectacular nor gory, and we don’t really enjoy any of the action. There are only a few flashes of his trademark brand of homicidal performance art, such as showing the butcher the drawing of his own decapitation (which I admit was fucking awesome) or a cute bear trap he sets early on. That ain’t a meal.
Popcorn Factor: 1/5
There’s just nothing to recommend Rising to you–no instantly classic scenes, no truly memorable characters or relevant action, and certainly no staying power from anything in the movie. Even diehard fans of Hannibal’s series would be hard-pressed to say they really enjoyed anything here, especially since every scene has that 5-second timer. And goddammit, this was a long movie at 2hrs, 10m, especially when it kept informing me that I was supposed to care about the hugely formative historical murderography myammedy-myah-myah. Hannibal Rising fails as a cash-in, as dramatic thriller, even as a tedious psychological profile. You’ll definitely want to look elsewhere to get your legendary slasher fix…for example, my very next review….