HANNIBAL  (2001)  **

Reviewed 2/10/01

What is interesting to discover after viewing HANNIBAL is that the title character, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), is really James Bond; well, James Bond if he were a serial killer. Charming, extremely rarified in his aesthetic tastes, always handy with a pun, Lecter travels internationally under a variety of disguises. Substitute sex with death, and we clearly see Lecter's model. Now if only he'd introduce himself as, "Lecter, Hannibal Lecter."

Lecter's arch-nemesis, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), could be the Blofeld of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Disfigured and constrained to a wheel chair, the wealthy Verger, is the sole survivor among Lecter's victims. He wants vengeance, and will pay any amount of money to get it. Instead of killer sharks, this villain utilizes killer swine. Surely, Thomas Harris, who wrote the much-maligned similarly-titled novel on which the film is based, thought murderous pigs would be more gothic. Verger and Lecter compete in the story and on the soundtrack as Verger is associated with Strauss' Blue Danube and Lecter with Bach's Goldberg Variations. Let's see, Strauss vs. Bach, I wonder who is going to win?

HANNIBAL opens with Lecter's other "old friend," Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore), commanding a drug bust that goes awry through no fault of her own. Subsequently, she faces FBI bureaucratic pressure while making the news, which in turn garners her the attention of Lecter. When we first come upon Lecter, he is at a lecture on Dante in Florence, Italy. Using the apt pseudonym Dr. Fell, he is questioned by a detective Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) in regards to the missing scholar whose job Lecter is after. Pazzi later realizes Fell's real identity, and responds to Verger's three million dollar reward for apprehending Lecter. Soon Verger's henchmen are sent out into the world to nab the fiend so Verger can feed him to the pigs. Lecter meanwhile turns his attentions to Clarice.

Anthony Hopkins does not disappoint with his performance, but so stylized a creature is Lecter, one imagines Hopkins could do Lecter in his sleep. Julianne Moore has a tougher job in that she has to take over a character made memorable by Jodie Foster. Moore succeeds effortlessly, quickly wiping Foster from memory. Gary Oldman meanwhile has his makeup to do most of his acting for him. Ridley Scott unnecessarily floods the screen with loving close-ups of Verger's ruined face.

HANNIBAL is, of course, the sequel to the 1991 thriller, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (which itself is the sequel to MANHUNTER). LAMBS is a sleek, strikingly well-directed thriller, as one could expect coming from Jonathan Demme, but deep down, the film is superficial nonsense, and more problematically, it glamorizes serial killers. When Lecter pursues a new victim at the end of the film, we are supposed to find it funny, not horrifying. Putting serial killers in vogue, LAMBS spawned a spat of inferior films that count THE BONE COLLECTOR, COPYCAT, and SE7EN among their number. None of them have much to do with real serial killers.

Now comes HANNIBAL, the culmination of the romanticized serial killer, serial killer as superhero. Not only is Lecter a Nietzschean ubermensch cool in the face of all danger, not only is he a mysterious force of nature that humbles animals in his wake, he is vigilante against a system so corrupt that cannibalism is a minor indignity. Lector becomes Dirty Harry with a multisyllabic vocabulary. It would be funny if the film did not so relentlessly struggle to keep Lecter an honorable man, matched only by the supremely principled Starling. At film's end, Ridley Scott and company supply HANNIBAL with one last chance to sever (literally) the audience's empathy with Lecter, rightfully complicating how Lecter should be viewed. Scott bumbles it as Lecter makes a ridiculous sacrifice in the name of fairness. At least, it is not the Bond-gets-the-girl ending of the book.