"I've been giving serious consideration to eating your wife?" (Hannibal (DVD))

Member Name: Moominpapa

Product:	Hannibal (DVD)
Date:	22/02/01 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hopkins excels as the title role.

Disadvantages: No sign of Jodie Foster

After both Red Dragon and The Silence of The Lambs were both adapted for film, it became quite clear that, on the release of Thomas Harris? third book featuring the infamous Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter, a third screen adaptation would appear. Hannibal was an instant bestseller, mainly due to the extreme success of The Silence of The Lambs adaptation.

Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as Lecter, along with many other famous faces, such as Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta and director Rifley Scott. Jodie Foster refused playing the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling for the sequel and was replaced by Julianne Moore.

As most will remember, at the end of Silence of the Lambs we were left with the shot of Dr. Lecter drifting off through the streets of Florence. Hannibal picks up ten years later, and sees Clarice Starling splattered all over the front pages of newspapers for shooting a mother carrying her child in her arm, and an automatic weapon in the other. With it being against Bureau policy, a scandal breaks loose. The disgraced agent receives word from Lecter's final victim (Oldman), the only one whom survived, concerning his whereabouts. Various different parties, then begin tracking down Lecter despite him being one of the most violent criminals on the FBI's ten most-wanted list.

Hopkins as always, is superb in the role, recapturing the character with excellence. The only downside is that Lecter is not as threatening as he was in the previous film. Not due to a fault on Hopkins part, but simply because he was no longer caged, which made the character increasingly menacing. This aside, it is clear that Hopkins remains a fine actor.

Unfortunately Julianne Moore doesn't do half as good a job of playing Clarice as Jodie Foster did, but that doesn't mean she was terrible. If Foster had returned then Hannibal would have probably received less of a shunning from critics, and it would have boosted the film a great deal
. Perhaps she should have studied Foster's portrayal in order to maintain the way in which Starling acts around Lecter.

Gary Oldman makes a good, if not slightly too amusing job as the victim hell-bent on hunting down Lecter, as does Ray Liotta as Clarice's chief sceptic. All in all the level of acting in Hannibal is reasonably high.

Ridley Scott makes a superb job of the direction, with noticeable fades and shots taken from Gladiator, which give a different perspective than the direction of Silence of the Lambs. The very opening shot really impressed me, with the screen starting small in the corner of the screen before gradually enlarging to fill the entire frame. Along with the impressive settings and the sometimes daunting music, Hannibal comes the effort put in by Scott really does shine through the finished product. Hopkins was even said to be searching the bars of Florence for extras to be used in the film and 6,000 pigs auditioning for the roles of the man-eating bores, with 15 Russian bores eventually playing the parts.

The screenplay differs from the book in a few ways. The main difference was the ending, which I won't spoil for either version, but the book's ending was deemed unsuitable for the big screen and the screenplay was rewritten many times, with a few personal touches from Thomas Harris himself.

Silence of the Lambs was controversial, due to its gruesome effects and disturbing images. This was very true, but Hannibal takes it all a bit further. Rather than using disturbing images of victims corpses, Hannibal uses full-on shockingly gruesome effects, although the gore doesn't crop very often. Recent news has been Hopkins' disgrace towards Italian censors cutting out the gore and destroying the impact of the film.

It was a real pleasure to go in to the cinema expecting to be disappointed only to be proven drastically wrong. Rumours are already spreading of Hopkins starring
in a remake of Manhunter, which was based on Red Dragon, and had Brian Cox as Lecter.

Summary: