movie film review | chris tookey
 
     
     
 

Hannibal Rising

 (18)
© The Weinstein Company - all rights reserved
     
  Hannibal Rising Review
Tookey's Rating
1 /10
 
Average Rating
3.12 /10
 
Starring
Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans
Full Cast >
 

Directed by: Peter Webber
Written by: Thomas Harris , from his own novel

 
Tookey's Review
Pro Reviews
Mixed Reviews
Anti Reviews
Cast
 
 
Released: 2007
   
Genre: HORROR
THRILLER
PREQUEL
   
Origin: UK/ Czech Republic/ France/ Italy
   
Colour: C
   
Length: 120
 
 


 
Given that this was a bad week for sick turkeys, it’s a mystery why they didn’t cull this along with the others. It would have been a kindness to let this latest outing of Hannibal the Cannibal perish. Thomas Harris – who has poorly adapted the script from his own novel - reveals in Hannibal Rising how and why Mr Lecter developed his taste in human cuisine. If you’re interested.

Reviewed by Chris Tookey


For those who haven’t read the novel, the child Hannibal suffers the trauma of seeing his parents char-grilled by a Russian bomber in World War II. Then he has to watch his little sister being eaten by Lithuanian Nazis. Worse than that, he has to experience the scenery-chewing of Rhys Ifans as the Lithuanians’ leader.

If Ifans’ acting wasn’t hard enough to swallow, the young man cast as Hannibal Jr – the Frenchman Gaspard Ulliel (pictured) - sounds and looks nothing like Anthony Hopkins. And the process by which he learns to gnaw on Nazis is not so much scary as risible.

Director Peter Webber made the stylish art-house pic Girl With The Pearl Earring, but is entirely the wrong man to direct this. It needed someone who would embrace and embellish the gruesome kitsch of Harris’s imagination.

Poor Webber has no feeling for pace or suspense, and tries to make everything less sensationalist and tasteless, with the predictable consequence. It’s no fun at all, and deadly dull. This Hannibal doesn’t so much rise to the occasion, as collapse in a heap.

Reggie the Veggie might have been more frightening. Or even Reagan the Vegan.


Key to Symbols