Are the fans still crying, Clarisse?

Hannibal Rising a despicable insult to the franchise

DYLAN FERGUSON STAFF

There was a pretty good Saturday Night Live sketch a few years ago called “young Hannibal Lecter” or something. It was a spoof trailer for a fake prequel to the Hannibal movies, with guest star Matt Damon playing Lecter as a college freshman. Damon did a great job imitating Anthony Hopkins’ iconic speech and manner, but his college dormmates, rather than getting chilled to the bone, respond to his weirdness by mercilessly mocking him, making him a reject rather than an object of fear and respect. The point of the skit was not necessarily to deride the now-legendary movie character, but to show how silly he would seem out of context, not locked up in a maximum security prison, but in an everyday setting, vulnerable to the opinions of his peers. It was funny.

Now we get the real Hannibal Lecter prequel, and it might have benefited from an off-kilter treatment like that SNL skit. I’m not saying they should have made it a comedy (though that would have been more entertaining) and I’m not saying Matt Damon should have starred (though he would have done a better job). I’m just saying that Hannibal Rising should have been something other than the awful, stupid, unimaginative, cash-grab piece of shit that it is.

Thomas Harris, who has written all the Hannibal Lecter books, decided to pen this screenplay himself, apparently so he could line

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his pockets with a little bit more of what I am sure he refers to as “facemunching dollars.” It is his first foray into the world of scriptwriting and, with a little luck and a spot of justice, it will be his last.

But even aside from the absolutely wretched screenplay, and Peter Webber’s directing, which does its futile best to match that level of putrescence, what really makes this movie despicable to “fannibals” is how it reduces Lecter’s origins to a series of revenge fantasies. The good doctor was one of the most fascinating characters to come out of ’90s cinema, so it’s incredibly disappointing to see his younger version getting treated like some kind of a fucking superhero.

No, seriously. There’s actually a scene where Lecter trains like a samurai, and he goes around killing people with Japanese steel, delivering deathblows and one-liners. The original Hannibal Lecter’s greatest weapon was his unparalleled understanding of the human mind, not his kendo abilities.

At the start of the film, we see how boy-Hannibal (French actor Gaspard Ulliel) watches his family murdered by slimy, evil Nazis during the Second World War. Then, when he’s a bit older, he moves in with his dead uncle’s Japanese widow, Lady Murasaki (Chinese actress Gong Li) and, after a couple of trial revenge runs, he takes on the self-same Nazis that ruined his life. Those Nazis are now wealthier and, therefore, even more ridiculously over-the-top evil (they keep women locked in cages, apparently so they can rape them whenever they wish). Don’t worry — they all meet predictably gruesome ends.

Lady Murasaki is well-positioned in the storyline to do something interesting, but her character is absolutely useless and completely undeveloped. Both Li, and, to a lesser degree, Ulliel, seem uncomfortable acting in English. This would have been a problem had they been given any real character.

Lecter is the only person Harris’ screenplay cares a fava bean’s worth about, but everything that is passed off as his “character development” is really just a succession of “nudgenudge” moments referencing what we all know he will become. Meaning, as a stand-alone film and not part of a franchise, it is 100 per cent pointless.

Ulliel, who you may know as fresh-faced boy-soldier Manech from A Very Long Engagement, is perfect as Hollywood’s idea of a serial killer: either sombrely determined or seething with icy blood-lust. But his performance leaves no room whatsoever for Sir Hopkins’ secret smiles and witticisms, for his enigmatic self-satisfaction as he manipulates others from some bizarre mental plane that no one else could achieve or comprehend.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal was intriguing because we could never understand him. And, as is now painfully obvious, neither could Thomas Harris. He should have left it that way. By giving the character a mindless, cop-out “motivation,” Harris is only undermining his past success.

At least that SNL sketch was good for a giggle. Hannibal Rising is good for nothing but a groan, a gag, and a fistful of cash for its makers. If series producer Dino DiLaurentiis opts to make another Hannibal movie, I may have to track him down and eat his face.

Now that’s motivation.