Hannibal Rising
Peter Webber
If this movie were a dish, Hannibal would send it right back to the kitchen. And then have the chef for dinner instead.
It’s a confused fusion creation which ultimately leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Movie No. 4 in the lucrative Hannibal franchise (not counting 1986’s Manhunter) sees rising French actor Gaspard Ulliel (A Very Long Engagement) playing the young Hannibal Lecter and promises to tell us what makes the carnivorous one tick. But by the time the big denouement comes around, it is a case of too little too late.
We are first transported to the harrowing last days of World War II in Lithuania, where a recently orphaned Hannibal is left to fend for himself and his little sister Mischa.Unfortunately for him, they run into some Very Bad Men, a group of militiamen led by Grutas (Rhys Ifan exuding dull-eyed evil).
Cut to eight years later and Hannibal is now haunted by nightmares. He flees from an oppressive orphanage, ends up in the home of his dead uncle’s Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), and eventually proceeds to wreak vengeance upon those men.
Hannibal also has to deal with an Inspector Popil (Dominic West) on his trail.
There are simply too many ingredients simmering in the pot. The result is a protracted and plodding film punctuated by bursts of increasingly gruesome mutilations and death.
It does not help that some of the elements are just plain jarring in the first place. The most egregious offender being the character of Lady Murasaki, which is shamelessly exploited for an over-the-top Exotic Orient effect. Even Gong Li cannot emote her way out as her character worships ancestors, arranges flowers, teaches kendo, and then morphs into biker chick.
Ulliel has an even more unenviable task of tackling a role Anthony Hopkins made his own. He cannot erase the memory of Hopkins’ bravura performance and director Peter Webber does him no favours by echoing the iconic image of Hopkins in a bite restraint mask. But the actor does leave an impression with his coolly reptilian stare and a menacing scythe-shaped scar on his left cheek, the result of Ulliel being clawed by a dog when he was six.
(ST)