I guess this will be a first for me. Having reviewed the book Hannibal Rising I will now review the movie. Another unusual aspect is that I liked the movie more than the book. True, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but there is only so much a movie-maker can do considering limited budgets and time spans. People generally want to see a movie in the frame of a couple of hours whereas reading a book requires a longer attention span. This, of course, opens the door for a lot more development and reflection.

HR the movie is actually impressively close to the novel. I’m sure this has something to do with the involvement of writer Thomas Harris in the development of the screenplay. The downfall of this is that the story isn’t particularly all that good so the failings of the writer carry over to the movie as well. It’s considered "horror" in its classification, but it’s really not. It’s a revenge story pitting one villain against others.

That’s part of what does make this story interesting, though. The Hannibal we know from Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal doesn’t yet exist. At the start of HR he’s just a boy, no more evil than little Anakin Skywalker. When his family is killed in WWII he and his sister become the captives of war criminals.

Jump ahead a few years and teen Hannibal is so traumatized he is mute. He can’t remember what happened to him except for snippets that plague his dreams. He is taken in by his aunt who trains him in the way of the Samurai. He takes the feudalistic ways to the extreme and takes it upon himself to bring justice to evil men.

As he remembers more and more of what happened in his childhood he seeks out the men who wronged him and brings his vengeance to them. The hatred in his heart and inability to cope with truths he learns puts him on the road to becoming the serial killer we love to fear.

This story isn’t so much about his becoming the serial killer as it is the story of a soul being corrupted. In this way the movie succeeds. It’s unrealistic to think Hannibal would be born a cannibalistic killer. Like all men, including the ones he himself kills, he does not set out to do evil for the sake of evil, he is doing what he thinks is right. It is because he dances with the devil that he descends into moral depravity.

Likewise he doesn’t begin eating people for no reason. He begins the practice as an element of his vengeance, and as he sinks into insanity he seems to develop a taste for human flesh that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. The progression from a vigilante using cannibalism as a retribution (or whatever his exact motives are, that isn’t really revealed and can only be surmised, but I can’t go into the reasoning behind what I think his motives are without giving away some important spoilers) to a serial killer who craves the taste of human flesh is beyond the plot of this story and occurs between HR and Red Dragon.

So if the progression from boy to villainous cannibal is good why isn’t the story better? I think part of it may be that the audience wanted more of a serial killer thriller than a revenge plot out of a Hannibal story. Perhaps Harris would have done better if he had put the revenge plot in the first portion of the story and then moved on to Hannibal’s early actions as a full-fledged sociopath. I think a lot of people, including myself, were hoping for a look at the events that led to his capture by Will Graham. We know that the pair were investigating a series of murders for which Hannibal was evidently responsible, but that’s about it. I guess since we’ve already seen the ending of that story with Hannibal’s capture and attempted murder of Will it would be hard to weave a story leading up to that with much surprise in it.

The whole Samurai aspect seems out of place to me. I can’t see why Harris included it. Hannibal in later years displays no hint of having formal Martial Arts training nor any particular affinity that I can recall for anything Oriental. Perhaps it’s just a way to show the birth of his interest in cultures or his gauge of what is proper. He is, after all, much put off by rudeness, and the Samurai way is serious about respect and honor.

The bottom line is that while there are some interesting elements to the story it’s just not as gripping as others have been. Compared to the other movies I would say that HR is nowhere near as good as  Silence… not quite as good but not far behind Red Dragon / Manhunter and is actually better than Hannibal (for which I didn’t care much).

I’ve never heard of any of the actors in this movie, but I thought the performances are largely quite good. I like the young actor playing Hannibal and think him fittingly chilling. I know a lot of people feel his heavy accent is inconsistent with Anthony Hopkins, but that could be explained with Hannibal working to rid himself of his accent after he left for the Americas. He doesn’t look exactly like Hopkins either, but what did you expect Hopkins in makeup to make him appear to be a teen?

There are some omission from the novel. For instance, there is no mention of any stolen art or anything that went along with that subplot. Other things are trimmed like the lack of any setup to Hannibal’s escape from the cellar. Very little has been actually changed, though. This is probably one of the most faithful book to screen translations out there.

HR is not a great movie, but it’s not bad. I guess it’s going to depend somewhat on what expectations you take into it with you. It’s quite a bit different than the other Hannibal movies in tone and focus, and that alone may be enough to keep it from being satisfying. The message I get out of it is similar to what I got out of Saw 3:  thirst for revenge tends to destroy rather than satisfy.

CONTENT:
The main thing here is violence. There is a lot of death and views of mutilated and cannibalized corpses. People get shot, slashed, and beheaded. It’s pretty brutal. There’s also violence against children though the majority of it is implied rather than shown. I can still see how it might bother people, though. Bad language isn’t all that frequent. Sex and nudity is absent, but there is sexual dialogue and an attempted rape. Hannibal’s aunt attempts to lure him away from the dark side with her sexuality. Even though she is not his blood relation and the attempt does not get very far at all some people still find this a little disturbing.

DVD:
My version is the widescreen unrated one. There is a pan & scan version that doesn’t say "unrated" so I assume it is the theatrical version. I haven’t seen a "theatrical widescreen" version available. While I don’t know much about what was restored after the theatrical version, some comments in the commentary make me think that this extended version is probably the way to go if you want to see the movie.

The DVD plays an antismoking ad and 3 previews before the interface which is pretty annoying. There are then a couple of warnings and such before the movie. The interface features some animation and sound that is pretty good. Audio offered is 5.1 surround.

I don’t know if the extras are the same in the other release, but this one has a handful of things. For starters is a commentary by the director and one of the producers. It gets into a lot of the production details. It’s mildly interesting but not great.

5 deleted scenes include optional commentary and a play all option. Most of these are quiet, dull scenes, hence the reason they were cut even from the extended version. The most interesting of them are Hannibal’s inquiring of the drug he will use to induce his memory and the diversion he creates in order to sneak aboard the boat.

A behind the scenes feature is a documentary promo with a lot of intercutting with movie scenes – too much in fact. It touches on numerous aspects of the production and has some interesting moments.

Another feature focuses specifically on the production design featuring an interview with the designer mixed with shots of the designs.
Lastly are theatrical and teaser trailers.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Hannibal Rising is a fairly interesting movie but fails to be outstanding in any way. It doesn’t invoke a strong emotional response or much deep thought (though maybe a little bit – I mean I did get a particular message out of it). It’s worth seeing if you like the Hannibal series, though. The DVD likewise is nothing particularly impressive and has nothing that makes this more worthy of a purchase than a rental unless you’re collecting all of these movies. 3* all together.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age